ABSTRACT
Macbeth, as a tragic hero, is a man with a capacity, one might almost say a taste, for damnation. Macbeth is a terrible play because its business is to give us some notion of what that damnation is which a man embraces when he is, indeed, man enough for it. Two critics have most convincingly explained Macbeth's "degenerative" quality, Mr. Francis Fergusson and Mr. Wayne Booth. Mr. Fergusson demonstrates that the Aristotelian action imitated by Macbeth is "To outrun the pauser, reason". Mr. Booth shows that Shakespeare manages to imitate this "degenerative" action largely by his wisdom in knowing which episodes of his story to narrate only, and which to represent directly on the stage; that is, by his adroitness in manipulating what Aristotle calls the "manner" of tragic imitation. This chapter clarifies the Aristotelian criteria by which such an argument proceeds, to test Aristotle's theory by Shakespeare's practice.
