Bradley+1-3

Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are unusual and they have an exceptional nature. They exhibit the same characteristics we find within ourselves, and within the persons who surround these characters. But, they are raised above us and others by an intensification of their life. We must realize that we have seldom known anyone resembling them. They all have a tendency to go in some particular direction: incapacity to resist the force. The fundamental tragic trait is the fatal tendency to identify with one object, passion, or habit of mind This fatal gift carries with it a touch of greatness when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius, or immense force. The conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs not only sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe.  In the circumstances where we see the hero placed, his tragic trait, which is also greatness, is fatal to him. In most cases the tragic error involves no conscious breach of right; in some, it is accompanied by a full conviction of right. In Hamlet there is a painful consciousness that duty is being neglected;  The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be ‘good’ though generally he is ‘good’ and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. In his fall we should be conscious of the possibilities of human nature. Hence, in the first place, at the end of the play we realize that man is not ‘good’ nor ‘evil’; man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small. This central feeling is the impression of waste, often with dreadful pain, as though they came into being for no other end. In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however they may be and however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not the ultimate power, what is this power?