The New Review June 1948

The more the leaders will give up the idea of reunion the greater the chances of the peoples being united. [...] And what a world ! The Elsinore of Hamlet the Cyprus of Othello the Inverness of Macbeth the Alexandria of Antony and CleoPatra the Heath and the Hovel in King Lear—what a world ! What passions spin it round with what fury they 'rumble their bellyful' how they spit fire spout rain ! As we but enter this tragic world—as we read the first pages or watch the opening scenes—we see and we hear [...] It is a world where good intentions fatally miscarry where the Shadow ever falls between the impulse and the act the flushed desire and the completed spasm the long agony of fevered expecttion and the wail and whimper of the crude reality. [...] Secondly the forces that rule or disrupt the tragic world—what are they of what kind are they ? Thirdly what sort of person is he—he the tragic hero (or she the tragic heroine)—who occupies the centre of the tragic world ? And how does he stand in relation to ouselves ? Fourthly the tragic world the forces that agitate it the hero who dominates it—what is the final impression that this tr [...] She revels in cotradictions she sways with her flawed magnificence the crests and cusps of endless change and in her the fair is lost in the foul and the foul in the fair.