on is not that
Duncan shall sleep for ever, but that Macbeth shall sleep no more; it is
not the extinction of a dynasty, but the ruin of a character.

We see in _Hamlet_ precisely the same thing. The action there that our
interest centres in, is the hero's struggle to conform to an internal
personal standard of right, utterly irrespective of use to others, or of
natural happiness to himself. In the course of this struggle, indeed, he
does nothing but ruin the happiness around him; and this ruin adds
greatly to the pathos of the spectacle. But we are not indignant with
Hamlet, as being the cause of it. We should have been indignant rather
with him if the case had been reversed, and if, instead of sacrificing
social happiness for the sake of personal right, he had sacrificed
personal right for the sake of social happiness.

In _Antigone_ the case is just the same, only there its nature is yet
more distinctly exhibited. We have for the central interest the same
personal struggle after right, not after use or happiness; and one of
the finest passages in that whole marvellous drama is a distinct
statement by the heroine that this is so. The one rule she says, that
she is resolved to live by, and not live by only, but if needs be to die
for, is no human rule, is no standard of man's devising, nor can it be
modified to suit our changing needs; but it is

_The unwritten and the enduring laws of God,
Which are not of to-day nor yesterday,
But live from everlasting, and none breathes
Who knows them, whence begotten._

In _Measure for Measure_ and _Faust_ we can see the matter reduced to a
narrower issue still. In both these plays we can see at once that one
moral judgment at least, not to name others, is before all things
pre-supposed in us. This is a hard and fixed judgment with regard to
female chastity, and the supernatural value of it. It is only because we
assent to this judgment that Isabella is heroic to us; and primarily for
the same reason that Margaret is unfortunate. Let us suspend this
judgment for a moment, and what will become of these two dramas? The
terror and the pity of them will vanish instantly like a dream. The
fittest name for both of them will be '_Much Ado about Nothing_.'

It will thus be seen, and the more we consider the matter the more
plain will it become to us--that in all such art as that which we have
been now considering, the premiss on which all its power and greatness
rests