This is not so in _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_, because here, although the hero perishes, the side opposed to him, being the more faulty or evil, cannot be allowed to triumph when he falls. Otherwise the type of construction is the same. The fortunes of Romeo and Juliet rise and culminate in their marriage (II. vi.), and then begin to decline before the opposition of their houses, which, aided by accidents, produces a catastrophe, but is thereupon converted into a remorseful reconciliation. Hamlet's cause reaches its zenith in the success of the play-scene (III. ii.). Thereafter the reaction makes way, and he perishes through the plot of the King and Laertes. But they are not allowed to survive their success. The construction in the remaining Roman plays follows the same plan, but in both plays (as in _Richard II._ and _Richard III._) it suffers from the intractable nature of the historical material, and is also influenced by other causes. In _Coriolanus_ the hero reaches the topmost point of success when he is named consul (II. iii.), and the rest of the play shows his decline and fall; but in this decline he attains again for a time extraordinary power, and triumphs, in a sense, over his original adversary, though he succumbs to another. In _Antony and Cleopatra_ the advance of the hero's cause depends on his freeing himself from the heroine, and he appears to have succeeded when he becomes reconciled to Octavius and marries Octavia (III. ii.); but he returns to Egypt and is gradually driven to his death, which involves that of the heroine.