Elements of the Shakespearean Tragedy  Tragic Hero: a person of high rank whose fate affects the destiny of his country, city, or family.  The hero is always an extraordinary and admirable man. He is usually good and noble, but when evil, he has equal traits such as strength, courage or ambition.

Shakespearean Tragedy  The hero has a character flaw, which, with the help of other circumstances, leads the hero to calamity and death—a contrast to the hero’s prior happiness and glory.  A dual conflict generates the play’s action. There is an external conflict (war) and an internal conflict (Macbeth’s ambition and later his guilty conscience).

Shakespearean Tragedy  Good always triumphs in the end. Although the hero has pulled down the world around him, there is someone who restores order at the end of the tragedy.  Tragedies contain the supernatural, such as witches and ghosts.  Tragedies contain characters who experience abnormal psychological states, such as Macbeth’s visions.