A Christian Pattern in Shakespeare’s Tragedies

The compositional pattern documented in this book consists of two elements. The first is taken from Romeo and Juliet and is relatively simple. It consists of a situation in which both Romeo and Juliet find themselves: each survives the death of the other. The protagonists of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies are put into this same situation: each survives the death of the woman he loves most. The second element is taken from Richard III and is more complex: it involves the motives of the protagonist. Each of the protagonists, like Richard, has two sets of motives, primary and secondary. The primary motives are unformulated to the his conscious mind, less clear, unavowed, but also more profound, more characteristic, more general, more real, more important. The secondary motives are his ostensible motives; they are clear, particular, consciously known, openly professed, but ultimately more superficial, less characteristic, less real or even unreal, less important.