THE TRUE PLACE OF TRAGEDY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10056, 30 May 1910, Page 4

THE TRUE PLACE OF TRAGEDY.

Professor W. M. Dixon, of Glasgow, in an on "Tragedy," recently, r aaid:—"Of all literary achievements the compesition of tragedy might be regarded as the crown, not because it presented more intrinsic difficulties, but because success in tragedy required rare breadth and distinction of mind. Developed tragedy came late in literary history. We could not take pleasure in tragedy until we could choose our own distance from which to \iew it. It balongcd to the tragic poet not only to draw vivid pictures of suffering and pain ending in death, but somehow to make those pictures agreeable and a source of 'pleasure to trie audience. How, it had been asked, could men watcn with pleasure tragedy presented? For Hegel the central idea of tragedy was the idea of conflict between opposing powers which met in the person of the hero, making his mind a battlefield, and involving him in suffering, and, it might be, leading to his destruction. The conflict was, said Hegel, a moral conflict, and we could bear to look upon suffering, misery, agony, or death as represented in the tragic drama, because j such left us reconciled to the rational nature of the cosmos by showing us the essential harmony among the moral powers. With this view the lecturer did not agree, and he asked if such tragedies as 'Romeo and Juliet.' 'Macbeth,' and 'King Lear' showed essential harmony among the moral powers. We must admit the sublimity of Hegel's theory; but we could not sacrifice our humanity, even for Hegel; and we certainly could not sacrifice Shakespeare."