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PARTISAN REVIEW
sions) which finds expression in almost all of his monologues and
asides; and again there is no other character in the play who could
possibly appreciate these speeches:
Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality;
All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
(II.
3)
I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf. (V. 3)
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (V. 5)
Not a soul in the drama could respond to such melancholy any more
than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could to that of Hamlet, or
Bo–
lingbroke to that of Richard II. Shakespeare's tragic heroes live in
a world of their own, and this-no less than the witches and ghosts–
underscores the inevitability of their disaster, which is not a matter
of circumstances but destiny. Macbeth and Hamlet are doomed no
less than Oedipus, called to do what they would rather not do, placed
in a world which is not their own and among people unable to un–
derstand them.
When we compare Shakespeare with Aeschylus and Sophocles,
the following points seem important. Shakespeare's dramas are longer
and more complex, and the satyr play
is
absorbed by the tragedy:
in–
stead of appearing as a separate member of a series of plays,
it
ap–
pears within the tragedy in the form of Shakespeare's famous comic
scenes. Secondly, the inevitability is rendered less obvious and tem–
pered by a wealth of psychological detail. And, finally, the mythical
stature in which most of the figures had shared in the ancient dramas
is in Shakespeare restricted to the hero. These three points make
Shakespeare more "modern" and mark the transition from the
classical drama to the romantic. He marks the end of a world in the
