]
[Footnote 156: Caution is very necessary in making comparisons between
Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like the _Antigone_
stands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespearean
tragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama like
the _Philoctetes_ is a self-contained whole, but, ending with a
solution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with a
play like _Cymbeline_. A drama like the _Agamemnon_ or the _Prometheus
Vinctus_ answers to no Shakespearean form of play. It is not a
self-contained whole, but a part of a trilogy. If the trilogy is
considered as a unit, it answers not to _Hamlet_ but to _Cymbeline_. If
the part is considered as a whole, it answers to _Hamlet_, but may then
be open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end with
the complete triumph of the worse side: the _Agamemnon_ and
_Prometheus_, if wrongly taken as wholes, would do this, and would so
far, I must think, be bad tragedies. [It can scarcely be necessary to
remind the reader that, in point of 'self-containedness,' there is a
difference of degree between the pure tragedies of Shakespeare and some
of the historical.]]
[Footnote 157: I leave it to better authorities to say how far these
remarks apply also to Greek Tragedy, however much the language of
'justice' may be used there.
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