oming to the first of the four tragedies, I propose to
discuss some preliminary matters which concern them all. Though each is
individual through and through, they have, in a sense, one and the same
substance; for in all of them Shakespeare represents the tragic aspect
of life, the tragic fact. They have, again, up to a certain point, a
common form or structure. This substance and this structure, which would
be found to distinguish them, for example, from Greek tragedies, may, to
diminish repetition, be considered once for all; and in considering them
we shall also be able to observe characteristic differences among the
four plays. And to this may be added the little that it seems necessary
to premise on the position of these dramas in Shakespeare's literary
career.

Much that is said on our main preliminary subjects will naturally hold
good, within certain limits, of other dramas of Shakespeare beside
_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. But it will often apply
to these other works only in part, and to some of them more fully than
to others. _Romeo and Juliet_, for instance, is a pure tragedy, but it
is an early work, and in some respects an immature one. _Richard III._
and _Richard II._, _Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and
_Coriolanus_ are tragic histories or historical tragedies, in which
Shakespeare acknowledged in practice a certain obligation to follow his
authority, even when that authority offered him an undramatic material.
Probably he himself would have met some criticisms to which these plays
are open by appealing to their historical character, and by denying that
such works are to be judged by the standard of pure tragedy. In any
case, most of these plays, perhaps all, do show, as a matter of fact,
considerable deviations from that standard; and, therefore, what is said
of the pure tragedies must be applied to them with qualifications which
I shall often take for granted without mention. There remain _Titus
Andronicus_ and _Timon of Athens_. The former I shall leave out of
account, because, even if Shakespeare wrote the whole of it, he did so
before he had either a style of his own or any characteristic tragic
conception. _Timon_ stands on a different footing. Parts of it are
unquestionably Shakespeare's, and they will be referred to in one of the
later lectures. But much of the writing is evidently not his, and as it
seems probable that the conception and construction of the whole traged