ond, _Hamlet_.

These two earlier works are both distinguished from most of the
succeeding tragedies in another though a kindred respect. Moral evil is
not so intently scrutinised or so fully displayed in them. In _Julius
Caesar_, we may almost say, everybody means well. In _Hamlet_, though we
have a villain, he is a small one. The murder which gives rise to the
action lies outside the play, and the centre of attention within the
play lies in the hero's efforts to do his duty. It seems clear that
Shakespeare's interest, since the early days when under Marlowe's
influence he wrote _Richard III._, has not been directed to the more
extreme or terrible forms of evil. But in the tragedies that follow
_Hamlet_ the presence of this interest is equally clear. In Iago, in the
'bad' people of _King Lear_, even in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, human
nature assumes shapes which inspire not mere sadness or repulsion but
horror and dismay. If in _Timon_ no monstrous cruelty is done, we still
watch ingratitude and selfishness so blank that they provoke a loathing
we never felt for Claudius; and in this play and _King Lear_ we can
fancy that we hear at times the _saeva indignatio_, if not the despair,
of Swift. This prevalence of abnormal or appalling forms of evil, side
by side with vehement passion, is another reason why the convulsion
depicted in these tragedies seems to come from a deeper source, and to
be vaster in extent, than the conflict in the two earlier plays. And
here again _Julius Caesar_ is further removed than _Hamlet_ from
_Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_.

But in regard to this second point of difference a reservation must be
made, on which I will speak a little more fully, because, unlike the
matter hitherto touched on, its necessity seems hardly to have been
recognised. _All_ of the later tragedies may be called tragedies of
passion, but not all of them display these extreme forms of evil.
Neither of the last two does so. Antony and Coriolanus are, from one
point of view, victims of passion; but the passion that ruins Antony
also exalts him, he touches the infinite in it; and the pride and
self-will of Coriolanus, though terrible in bulk, are scarcely so in
quality; there is nothing base in them, and the huge creature whom they
destroy is a noble, even a lovable, being. Nor does either of these
dramas, though the earlier depicts a corrupt civilisation, include even
among the minor characters anyone who can be calle