Neither is it
admissible to represent the misfortunes of a thoroughly good man, for
that is merely painful and distressing; and least of all is it tolerable
gratuitously to introduce mere baseness, or madness, or other
aberrations from human nature. The true tragic hero is a man of high
place and birth who having a nature not ignoble has fallen into sin and
pays in suffering the penalty of his act. Nothing could throw more light
on the distinguishing characteristics of the Greek drama than these few
remarks of Aristotle, and nothing could better indicate how close, in
the Greek mind, was the connection between aesthetic and ethical
judgments. The canon of Aristotle would exclude as proper themes for
tragedy the character and fate, say, of Richard III--the absolutely bad
man suffering his appropriate desert; or of Kent and Cordelia--the
absolutely good, brought into unmerited affliction; and that not merely
because such themes offend the moral sense, but because by so offending
they destroy the proper pleasure of the tragic art.
Pages:
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722