or
Othello) it is accompanied by a full conviction of right. In Hamlet
there is a painful consciousness that duty is being neglected; in Antony
a clear knowledge that the worse of two courses is being pursued; but
Richard and Macbeth are the only heroes who do what they themselves
recognise to be villainous. It is important to observe that Shakespeare
does admit such heroes,[9] and also that he appears to feel, and exerts
himself to meet, the difficulty that arises from their admission. The
difficulty is that the spectator must desire their defeat and even their
destruction; and yet this desire, and the satisfaction of it, are not
tragic feelings. Shakespeare gives to Richard therefore a power which
excites astonishment, and a courage which extorts admiration. He gives
to Macbeth a similar, though less extraordinary, greatness, and adds to
it a conscience so terrifying in its warnings and so maddening in its
reproaches that the spectacle of inward torment compels a horrified
sympathy and awe which balance, at the least, the desire for the hero's
ruin.

The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good,' though
generally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error.
But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in his
error and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of human
nature.[10] Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean tragedy is never,
like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the book
with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched
and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending
and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics
ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatness
of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected,
secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic
impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. With
Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the
tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense
of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. 'What
a piece of work is man,' we cry; 'so much more beautiful and so much
more terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty and
greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?' We seem to have
before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, t