"A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side"
About this Quote
Bradley starts by letting you think you know where he is going: tragedy equals disaster plus a dead VIP. It’s a deliberately spare, almost bureaucratic definition - “exceptional calamity,” “man in high estate” - the kind of phrasing that sounds like a legal brief trying to pin down a slippery genre. That’s not an accident. As a Victorian-era critic (and, in your prompt, a judge), he’s staging a courtroom move: stipulate the obvious, then pivot to the real argument.
The pivot phrase, “But it is clearly much more than this,” carries the quiet authority of someone who expects assent. “Clearly” isn’t evidence; it’s pressure. Bradley is invoking a shared cultural literacy - the educated reader who’s supposed to feel that reducing Shakespeare to plot mechanics is almost philistine. Then he widens the aperture: “regard it from another side.” The subtext is methodological. He’s nudging the reader away from tragedies as mere sequences of events and toward tragedies as experiences: moral psychology, inner conflict, the felt weight of choice, and the way Shakespeare makes character and catastrophe fuse.
Context matters. Bradley wrote in a period when Shakespeare criticism was professionalizing, trying to sound disciplined rather than rhapsodic. His opening “may be called” concedes the textbook summary; the real work is to justify why Shakespearean tragedy can’t be captured by a synopsis, even a correct one. By foregrounding “a man in high estate,” he also hints at the social stakes: these plays obsess over power because power magnifies consequences. The promise of “another side” is the hook - not to abandon plot, but to treat it as the scaffolding for something more unsettling: how greatness fails from the inside.
The pivot phrase, “But it is clearly much more than this,” carries the quiet authority of someone who expects assent. “Clearly” isn’t evidence; it’s pressure. Bradley is invoking a shared cultural literacy - the educated reader who’s supposed to feel that reducing Shakespeare to plot mechanics is almost philistine. Then he widens the aperture: “regard it from another side.” The subtext is methodological. He’s nudging the reader away from tragedies as mere sequences of events and toward tragedies as experiences: moral psychology, inner conflict, the felt weight of choice, and the way Shakespeare makes character and catastrophe fuse.
Context matters. Bradley wrote in a period when Shakespeare criticism was professionalizing, trying to sound disciplined rather than rhapsodic. His opening “may be called” concedes the textbook summary; the real work is to justify why Shakespearean tragedy can’t be captured by a synopsis, even a correct one. By foregrounding “a man in high estate,” he also hints at the social stakes: these plays obsess over power because power magnifies consequences. The promise of “another side” is the hook - not to abandon plot, but to treat it as the scaffolding for something more unsettling: how greatness fails from the inside.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) — opening definition of Shakespearean tragedy (commonly cited from the book's introductory discussion). |
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