Bradley+1-3

3  Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are *persons of high degree or of public and they have an exceptional *being. They exhibit the same characteristics we find within *ourselves, and within the *people 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 *anyone resembling them. They all have a tendency to go in some particular direction: a *total incapacity to resist *the force. The fundamental tragic trait is the fatal tendency to *identify the whole being 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 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 *his 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 plan we realize that man is not *wretched nor *awful; 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?