Let us now pause for a moment on the ideas we have so far reached. They would more than suffice to describe the whole tragic fact as it presented itself to the mediaeval mind. To the mediaeval mind a tragedy meant a narrative rather than a play, and its notion of the matter of this narrative may readily be gathered from Dante or, still better, from Chaucer. Chaucer's _Monk's Tale_ is a series of what he calls 'tragedies'; and this means in fact a series of tales _de Casibus Illustrium Virorum_,--stories of the Falls of Illustrious Men, such as Lucifer, Adam, Hercules and Nebuchadnezzar. And the Monk ends the tale of Croesus thus: Anhanged was Cresus, the proude kyng; His roial trone myghte hym nat availle. Tragedie is noon oother maner thyng, Ne kan in syngyng crie ne biwaille But for that Fortune alwey wole assaile With unwar strook the regnes that been proude; For whan men trusteth hire, thanne wol she faille, And covere hire brighte face with a clowde. A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood in high degree,' happy and apparently secure,--such was the tragic fact to the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy and pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened men and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or some other name,--a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride. Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goes beyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe the identity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored. Tragedy with Shakespeare is concerned always with persons of 'high degree'; often with kings or princes; if not, with leaders in the state like Coriolanus, Brutus, Antony; at the least, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, with members of great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment. There is a decided difference here between _Othello_ and our three other tragedies, but it is not a difference of kind. Othello himself is no mere private person; he is the General of the Republic. At the beginning we see him in the Council-Chamber of the Senate. The consciousness of his high position never leaves him. At the end, when he is determined to live no longer, he is as anxious as Hamlet not to be misjudged by the great world, and his last speech begins, Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know it.[2]