ABSTRACT
One of the cliches of our time is that the common isolation of the romantic and the modern hero reflects the sense of alienation from society felt by many romantic and modern artists and intellectuals. The Renaissance author, brought up to worship and emulate the ancients, became thereby a conscious link in a great tradition, a member of the European community. Renaissance heroes, like classical heroes, are eminent in worldly position as well as in character. The Renaissance hero was not merely of lofty station; his moral stature, his personality, was commonly enlarged to something like superhuman dimensions. Some of our earlier generalities about Renaissance writers apply to the dramatists as well as the heroic poets—tragic heroes are likewise of exalted station, and larger than life—but there are divergences and added complexities. The tragic hero, in Shakespeare most of all, is the common level in imaginative sensibility and the gift of utterance, qualities which bulk large in the total effect.
