ABSTRACT
Two or three aspects of this interest, if not explanations of it, may be briefly noticed. One was the childlike love of vivid sensation, so characteristic of every form of Eliza bethan art; from this standpoint we may say that the men of that age went to see a tragedy as a boy would gladly go to see a collision between two motor-cars or locomotives, if the accident could be foreseen. A somewhat deeper aspect is the interest of personality. The Renaissance developed this in many ways, and, as we have seen, by no
means failed to take account of the evil in human nature: this, while a distressing, was also a fascinating feature of mankind. From this standpoint, then, we may say that the Elizabethans went to see a tragedy as any of us would go out of our way to see a vial which we were told contained a distillation of the most deadly poison known to chemistry, or a serpent whose fangs produced the most dangerous venom of the tropics. A third aspect of tragedy, rather more attractive and more creditable to its amateurs, is its relationship to poetry. For the conditions of the Eliza bethan drama this, it is clear, would be highly important. Poetry sometimes becomes a vehicle of comedy, but it is a kind of triumph over natural incompatibility when it does. Of tragedy, however, it has been the normal vehicle, and the passions with which tragedy is concerned have in almost every age stimulated poetry to its highest reaches of beauty and power. Of this the age of Sophocles and that of Shakespeare are, of course, the supreme examples. The Elizabethans, then, found in tragedy a means of satis fying at once their interest in vivid sensation, their curi osity respecting the darkest corners of the human mind and heart, and their love of surging eloquent verse.
