The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is
darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident,
than the impression of the doctrine of Aeschylus. Fate, irreversible and
inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we
trace the sign, in the upshot of "Othello" or "King Lear." The last step
into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all
English poets. With Shakespeare--and assuredly not with
Aeschylus--righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the
masterdom of fate: but fate itself, in the tragic world of Webster,
seems merely the servant or the synonyme of chance. The two chief agents
in his two great tragedies pass away--the phrase was, perhaps,
unconsciously repeated--"in a mist": perplexed, indomitable, defiant of
hope and fear; bitter and sceptical and bloody in penitence or
impenitence alike. And the mist which encompasses the departing spirits
of these moody and mocking men of blood seems equally to involve the
lives of their chastisers and their victims. Blind accident and
blundering mishap--"such a mistake," says one of the criminals, "as I
have often seen in a play"--are the steersmen of their fortunes and the
doomsmen of their deeds.
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