| Summary: | In Shakespeare’s tragedies, the protagonist is typically called to a new role in the world of the play, as when Hamlet is called to be a revenger by the appearance of his father’s ghost. Such moments of calling are the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition of election as found in the Bible and medieval literature, although it finds secular expression in Shakespearean drama. Election functions in many of the same ways as tragic fate, responding to a disorder in nature and leading to the protagonist’s downfall. Election, however, also includes certain purely human elements that can work against tragic pathos, as we find in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
|
|---|