could hardly be defended on purely dramatic grounds; and still later, occupying some hundred and twenty lines of the very last scene, we have the chatter of Osric with Hamlet’s mockery of it.  But the acme of audacity is reached in Antony and Cleopatra, where, quite close to the end, the old countryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra discourses on the virtues and vices of the worm, and where his last words, ’Yes, forsooth:  I wish you joy o’ the worm,’ are followed, without the intervention of a line, by the glorious speech,

     Give me my robe; put on my crown; I have
     Immortal longings in me....

In some of the instances of pathos or humour just mentioned we have been brought to that part of the play which immediately precedes, or even contains, the catastrophe.  And I will add at once three remarks which refer specially to this final section of a tragedy.

(f) In several plays Shakespeare makes here an appeal which in his own time was evidently powerful:  he introduces scenes of battle.  This is the case in Richard III., Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.  Richard, Brutus and Cassius, and Macbeth die on the battlefield.  Even if his use of this expedient were not enough to show that battle-scenes were extremely popular in the Elizabethan theatre, we know it from other sources.  It is a curious comment on the futility of our spectacular effects that in our theatre these scenes, in which we strive after an ‘illusion’ of which the Elizabethans never dreamt, produce comparatively little excitement, and to many spectators are even somewhat distasteful.[22] And although some of them thrill the imagination of the reader, they rarely, I think, quite satisfy the dramatic sense.  Perhaps this is partly because a battle is not the most favourable place for the exhibition of tragic character; and it is worth notice that Brutus, Cassius and Antony do not die fighting, but commit suicide after defeat.  The actual battle, however, does make us feel the greatness of Antony, and still more does it help us to regard Richard and Macbeth in their day of doom as heroes, and to mingle sympathy and enthusiastic admiration with desire for their defeat.

(g) In some of the tragedies, again, an expedient is used, which Freytag has pointed out (though he sometimes finds it, I think, where it is not really employed).  Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes.  They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen.  Occasionally, however, where we dread the catastrophe because we love the hero, a moment occurs, just before it, in which a gleam of false hope lights up the darkening scene; and, though we know it is false, it affects us.  Far the most remarkable example is to be found in the final Act of King Lear.  Here the victory of Edgar