Page:Shakespearean Tragedy (1912).djvu/62

46 this warning, and no less Othello’s answer, ‘My life upon her faith,’ make our hearts sink. The whole of the coming story seems to be prefigured in Antony’s muttered words ( ii. 120):

and, again, in Hamlet’s weary sigh, following so soon on the passionate resolution stirred by the message of the Ghost:

These words occur at a point (the end of the First Act) which may be held to fall either within the exposition or beyond it. I should take the former view, though such questions, as we saw at starting, can hardly be decided with certainty. The dimensions of this first section of a tragedy depend on a variety of causes, of which the chief seems to be the comparative simplicity or complexity of the situation from which the conflict arises. Where this is simple the exposition is short, as in Julius Caesar and Macbeth. Where it is complicated the exposition requires more space, as in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and King Lear. Its completion is generally marked in the mind of the reader by a feeling that the action it contains is for the moment complete but has left a problem. The lovers have met, but their families are at deadly enmity; the hero seems at the height of success, but has admitted the thought of murdering his sovereign; the old king has divided his kingdom between two hypocritical daughters, and has rejected his true child; the hero has acknowledged a sacred duty of revenge, but is weary of life: and we ask, What will come of this? Sometimes, I may add, a certain time is supposed to elapse before the events which answer our question make their