‘Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar
I have not slept.
Between the first acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream;
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.’
Brutus, Julius Caesar, ii.i
‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against itself falleth.’
Jesus, St Luke’s Gospel, 11.17
One of the more illuminating ways to look at the pattern of Tragedy is to contrast it with the types of plot we discussed earlier.
In some respects the position of the hero or heroine at the beginning of a Tragedy is not dissimilar to that of the hero or heroine at the opening of, say, a Quest or a Rags to Riches story. We first meet them in some situation which does not give ease or satisfaction, which cries out for change. Then something happens which points the way forward. They receive some kind of ‘Call’ which leads them out of their dissatisfying state into the adventure which is going to transform their lives.
The great difference between Tragedy and other kinds of story begins with the nature of the summons which draws them into that adventure. When the hero of an Overcoming the Monster story or a Quest receives the ‘Call’ – however hazardous the course it opens out to him – we are in no doubt it is right for him to answer it. When the hero or heroine of Tragedy reaches the same point we are uneasy. We are aware that the ‘Call’ is not of the same nature; which is why it may more aptly be described as the ‘Temptation’.
This is because of the peculiar way in which the summons to action is directed at one particular aspect of the hero or heroine’s personality. We have already become aware that there is one part of them, one desire, one appetite, which is nagging at them to the point where the urge to gratify it is building up into an overwhelming obsession. This may be an appetite for power, as in the case of Macbeth or Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, who dreams of winning ‘power, honour and omnipotence’ such as no man has ever enjoyed before. It may be a hunger for sexual excitement or romantic passion, as with Humbert Humbert, or those two wives frustrated by their tedious, inadequate husbands, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary. It may be a longing for sensation rather vaguer and harder to define, as in the examples of Dorian Gray or Bonnie and Clyde, committing bank robberies for ‘kicks’, where elements of sexual desire and the desire for power over others are mixed together.
But in every instance we are aware that what their obsession is drawing them into is something which violates and defies some prohibition or law or convention or duty or commitment or standard of normality. They are being tempted into stepping outside the bounds which circumscribe them.1 Icarus wishes to defy the balance of the natural laws which govern his flight. Doctor Faustus wishes to step outside the bounds of conventional knowledge. Dr Jekyll and Dorian Gray wish to step outside the bounds of morality. Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary wish to step outside the bounds of their marriages. In every case, the tragic hero or heroine has come to sense the circumstances in which we originally discover them – Macbeth, Bonnie and Clyde, Humbert Humbert, Don José – as in some way irksome, restricting, tedious, inadequate.
And it is this sense of constriction from which the Temptation – whether it originates within themselves or is personified in the figure of a Tempter or Temptress who lures them on – seems to offer the promise of almost unimaginably exhilarating release.
This leads on to a second difference between the pattern of Tragedy and that of other kinds of story. When the hero of a Quest or an Overcoming the Monster story receives the ‘Call’, not only are we in no doubt that they should answer it: we know that they will have to commit themselves to their adventure totally, body, mind, heart and soul; and they usually leave no one else in any doubt as to their intentions. We are given the impression of someone completely and openly dedicated to the course he is embarking on.
When the heroes or heroines of Tragedy are faced with the Temptation it is a different matter. In many instances we see them struggling or wavering before they succumb, a sign that they are initially by no means single-minded about giving way. Faustus wrestles with himself before signing his pact with the Devil, as he hears the arguments of the ‘Evil Angel’ urging him on and the ‘Good Angel’ trying to call him back. Macbeth falters at the sight of the dagger in his hand, until Lady Macbeth as his ‘evil angel’ pushes him onward. Brutus wavers through the course of the stormy, ill-omened night before Caesar’s murder, until the ‘evil angel’ Cassius finally persuades him. Don José is torn between his ‘good angel’ Micaela, and his ‘evil angel’ Carmen.
In each instance it is as if part of them is reluctant to commit the irrevocable act which another part of them has come to desire: as if, right from the start, the tragic hero or heroine is a ‘divided self’, one part of their personality striving against another.
A second way in which many heroes or heroines of Tragedy may be seen as ‘divided’ is in the need to keep their ‘dark’ impulses and actions hidden from the world behind a ‘light’ or respectable front. The main reason why Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has become one of the most celebrated stories of the English-speaking world is precisely because it crystallises this familiar motif so vividly, by making the central characteristic of the story the splitting of the hero into two quite distinct personalities, the respectable, law-abiding Jekyll and his secret ‘shadow-self’, the deformed and totally amoral ‘night creature’ Hyde. In The Picture of Dorian Gray the split is personified in the contract between the hero’s perennially youthful beauty, unmarked by his crimes and moral excesses, and the portrait hidden away which carried the full burden of the moral and physical degeneration marking Gray’s downward path. Professor Humbert, the great-grandson of two Dorset clergymen, for a long time manages to keep his secret obsession with little girls hidden behind the front of the respectable academic. He leads a ‘double life’, just as in their different ways, and for varying amounts of time, do the murderer Macbeth and the adulterous Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary.
In general we may speak of a split between the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides of all these characters: and it is, of course, their ‘dark’ side, initially hidden from the world, which is worked up into a state of anticipatory obsession by the Temptation. But sooner or later they succumb. The ‘dark’ energy finds its Focus. Macbeth screws up his determination to kill Duncan, Don José succumbs to the charms of Carmen, Anna Karenina succumbs to the charms of Vronsky, Humbert seduces the willing Lolita, Faustus seals his pact with Mephistopheles: they have passed the point of no return. And the first consequence is a flood of nervous excitement, marking their entry into a new stage. As Dr Jekyll puts it, when he first manages to effect the switch into his Hyde-self:
‘I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution of the bounds of obligation...’
The bounds have been overstepped. Suddenly all seems possible. We are aware that our hero or heroine has left the comparative safety and security of the situation in which they began, like a boat launched out from the shore onto the unknown currents of a fast-flowing river. And to begin with it is fiercely exhilarating to be whirled along in this manner. But where is it going to lead them?
One of the most significant facts about stories, as we know, is their drive to work towards an ending: an ending which will give us the sense that everything set in train during the story has been resolved. In almost any story we see the hero or heroine leaving their initial state for a period of still greater uncertainty, when all seems more than ever unresolved. But where the story has a happy ending, we eventually see them arrive at a state where they can come to rest, on new and much more secure foundations. If a central part has been played in the story by some great threat or shadow, that shadow will have been lifted. If there is division between the characters, it will in some way or other have been resolved, usually in a general spirit of reconciliation. We have a profound sense that things are at least, in every way, complete. And symbolising that completion, at the heart of most happy endings, there is the spectacle of a hero and heroine united in love, with the future ahead of them.
The whole point of Tragedy, of course, is that it is not like that. It is somehow in the nature of the course the hero or heroine has embarked on that they are not going to reach that happy and secure point of rest. They may imagine that, if only they can reach such and such a place, they will be secure. Indeed a large part of their time is often spent striving towards just such a fondly imagined goal. But the trouble is that the ground keeps on giving way under their feet. From the moment they succumb to the Temptation and imagine that they are about to start enjoying their rewards, nothing turns out quite as they expected. Indeed, if we look closely at the unfolding of any of the tragedies we have been considering, we can see how the mood of the central figure is continually swinging between anticipation and frustration throughout the story. Nothing for the hero or heroine bent on a tragic course can even quite resolve. And for this there are two, closely related reasons.
The first is that, when they embark on their course, there is always something which they overlook. It is not for nothing that we apply the word ‘reckless’ to the mood in which they set out: they have their attention fixed so obsessively on one point, one object of desire, that they do not pay heed to other factors in the overall context in which they are operating which may therefore produce consequences which their restricted vision fails to foresee. When Icarus ascends upwards in his heady flight towards the sun he shuts his mind to the physical laws governing his flight. When Don José succumbs to his infatuation for Carmen, he has become blinded to the possibility that she may eventually switch her affections to someone else just as casually as she switches them to him. When Macbeth carries out the murder of Duncan his only conscious thought is that he is removing the one obstacle between himself and his heart’s desire, the kingship. It does not enter his mind that his crime might one day be found out.
In fact we see the heroes and heroines of Tragedy becoming more and more ensnared in their predicament, precisely like the hero of one of those ‘Stickfast’ tales in folklore where, with every attempt to get free (like Macbeth murdering the suspicious Banquo) he only gets a little more trapped: except that when Brer Rabbit gets stuck to the Tar Baby he is falling into a trap laid for him by someone else, whereas the heroes and heroines of Tragedy are becoming ensnared by some obsessive desire which springs ultimately from themselves. In this respect it is no accident that we so often, in relation to the central figures of Tragedy, see reference to the words ‘dream’ and ‘fantasy’. We naturally use such words to describe the state of mind of someone who has in some way lost touch with the reality of the world around him. And this is precisely what is happening to the hero and heroine of a Tragedy. They are being drawn into a kind of fantasy or dream-state, in which their obsession with gratifying one desire or appetite overrules their capacity for wider judgement. Having entered into such a state of illusion, they slide further and further into it. Having made one false move, they are led into another and another in an increasingly desperate bid to shore up or retrieve their position. They are set more and more at odds with the reality of the world around them – until finally it begins to close in on them, demanding a reckoning.2
Nowhere do we see this inexorable process more clearly reflected – and this is the second reason why the course followed by the hero or heroine of Tragedy cannot reach a satisfactory resolution – than in the evolving nature of their relations with the other people around them in the story.
At the beginning of a full five-stage Tragedy, the central figure is always part of a community, a network of relationships, linked to other people by ties of loyalty, friendship, family or marriage. And one of the most important things which happens to such heroes and heroines as they embark on their tragic course is that they begin to break those bonds of loyalty, friendship and love (even if, initially, they may form other alliances). It is the very essence of Tragedy that the hero or heroine should become, step by step, separated from other people. Often they separate themselves in the most obvious, violent and final way possible, by causing other people’s deaths. And here we must particularly note the kind of people around the hero or heroine who are most likely to die in a Tragedy.
In tragedies centred on a hero, we may single out four types of victim who are particularly likely to suffer as a result of the hero’s reckless course. Two of these are male, two female – and we may describe them as:
the Good Old Man
the Rival or ‘Shadow’
the Innocent Young Girl
the Temptress.
This is a figure older than the hero, who in some way represents kingly or fatherly authority. Examples are Duncan, killed by Macbeth; Julius Caesar, killed by Brutus; the Commendatore, killed by Don Giovanni.
This is a figure in some way on a level with the hero (e.g., by age, rank or some other similarity) who comes to stand as a kind of ‘opposite’ and threat to him. An obvious example is Banquo, Macbeth’s comrade in arms and fellow-general, who is promised that his descendants will succeed where Macbeth fails and who is the first to see through his old friend’s crimes. Another instance is Jim Vane, the young brother of the actress Sibyl Vane, who is driven by a pure love for his wronged sister, just as Dorian Gray’s love for her is impure. A third is Quilty, the lover who steals Lolita off Humbert Humbert. He stands as a threatening ‘shadow’ to the hero in the opposite way, precisely because he is so similar to Humbert, sharing his obsession; which is why Humbert feels eventually driven to murder him.
Even more significant than the hero’s relations with these male figures are those between him and the chief feminine figures in the story: particularly when we bear in mind how important it is to a fully resolved happy ending that the hero should eventually be brought together with a heroine as his ‘other half’ in perfect, loving union.
The chief feminine figures in Tragedy also tend to polarise into two distinct types:
On the one hand, most poignant of all the hero’s victims because she is so defenceless against his hard-hearted egotism, there is the innocent young girl. She stands in relation to the hero as ‘good angel’, but is inadequate to sway him. Sooner or later the hero brutally rejects her. And there is no moment in Tragedy more pregnant with the horror of what is happening to the hero on his downward path than when the fate of such a girl is decided: as when little Matryosha, after being raped by Stavrogin, sits in her trance muttering ‘I have killed God’, before committing suicide. Sibyl Vane, rejected by Dorian Gray, does likewise. When little Micaela is finally rejected by Don José and creeps away into the shadows, we know he is doomed. The whole tragedy of Othello is contained precisely in the way that he blindly turns on the ‘good angel’ of his life, his ‘other half’ Desdemona, and stabs her to death.
The other type of heroine in Tragedy is quite different, in that she is herself a ‘dark’ figure, leading the hero on. Even so, the Temptress almost invariably ends up dying a violent death, usually at much the same time as the hero. Bonnie, having drawn Clyde into his life of violent crime, is shot down with him in the closing moments of the story. Cleopatra, having lured Antony away from his manly `Roman self’ and played a crucial part in dragging him down to military humiliation, commits suicide shortly after he does. The most terrible symptom of the nightmare closing in on Macbeth is the onset of his wife’s insanity, leading to her mysterious death shortly before his own.
At least these ‘dark’ heroines remain faithful to the man they have drawn down to destruction. In other versions of the theme the Temptress slips away from the hero in the closing stages, and nothing contributes more to his mounting sense of frustration than the fact that the woman for whom he has staked all proves ultimately elusive. Humbert loses Lolita. Carmen’s abandonment of Don José drives him to final distraction. Catherine, the ‘apparition’ who bewitches Jules and Jim, ends up by slipping away from one and dragging the other down to his doom. And nowhere is this motif of the ‘elusive feminine’ presented more subtly than in Doctor Faustus where, as the last, supreme demonstration of his devil-given powers, the hero is permitted to conjure up the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, Helen of Troy. Faustus steps forward to seize and kiss her. She turns out to be just another insubstantial vision, and vanishes. At last he knows all is lost.
In every instance the hero finds himself unable to reach the fulfilment he craves, where he can achieve complete and lasting union with his desired ‘other half’. Either she drags him down to share his destruction, or she skips away from him like a will o’ the wisp. The same is true, in reverse, of tragedies centred on a heroine.
Both Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary leave the dull, inadequate security of their marriages for men who set them on fire with a fantasy of romantic passion. In each case they cannot reach the new security they dream of, where they can at last achieve the sense of total union with another man. In each case they begin to flounder and struggle: part of them still wishing to push onward, part now longing to get back to the dull security they so recklessly abandoned. In Anna Karenina there is that superb description of the ‘divided self’ when, at the height of the Frustration Stage, Anna tells her husband:
‘there is another in me... I am afraid of her. It was she who fell in love with the other one ... that other is not I.’
But it is the dark ‘other self’ which eventually wins, leading Anna to reject Karenin for the last time and to throw in her lot irrevocably with Vronsky. No sooner has she done so than her lover begins to slip away, a will o’ the wisp, leaving her to dis-integrate towards that terrible final moment when, all alone, she flings herself beneath the wheels of the advancing train.
The point about the heroes and heroines of Tragedy is that they end up utterly alone (even if, occasionally, like Bonnie and Clyde, hero and heroine die together), completely cut off from the rest of society. They have been drawn by some part of themselves into a course of action which is fundamentally selfish, putting some egocentric desire above every other consideration, isolating them both from reality and from other people. Initially, in the Dream Stage, they succeed in imposing their will on the world and the people around them. They have broken the rules and seem to be getting away with it, because they have seized the initiative and because other people are not yet fully aware of what they are up to.
But gradually the truth of what they are doing begins to dawn on others. Those around them begin to constellate in opposition. The hero or heroine having first set themselves against others, we now see the rest of society gradually setting itself against them.
Finally, having torn and trampled the network of relationships originally surrounding them into shreds, the hero or heroine is left alone. Whereas in other types of story the tendency is for a general gathering together at the end, round the central union of the hero and the heroine, in Tragedy exactly the reverse happens. The hero and heroine are divided in every way: split within themselves, split from their ‘other self’, split from the rest of society, which has gathered together only to encompass their destruction. Entirely isolated, all that is left is that their life should be violently extinguished.
In this image of an incomplete, egocentric figure who meets a lonely and violent end, we may recognise the essential characteristics of another deeply familiar figure from stories, whom we have already met in quite another context. We begin the next chapter by exploring some of the striking parallels which emerge between the hero or heroine of Tragedy and that figure we previously encountered, from a very different standpoint, as the Monster.