If we inquire into what sort of interest is aroused in us by the heroes and kings of heroic tragedy, we will soon see that the situations and pompous characters which it presents to us are no more than traps laid for our vanity; they seldom appeal to the heart. Our vanity is flattered when we are made to participate in the secrets of a magnificent court, to be present at a council which is to revolutionize the state, to enter a private room of the queen, whom in actual life we should scarcely be allowed to see.
We delight in believing ourself the confidant of an unhappy prince, because his sorrows, his tears, his weaknesses, seem to bring his position in life much nearer to our own, or else console us for being so far beneath him; and, without our being aware, each of us seeks to widen his sphere, and our pride is nourished by the pleasure we experience in judging, in the theater, these masters of the world who, anywhere else, might well walk over without noticing us. Men deceive themselves more easily than they are apt to imagine: the wisest among them is often affected by motives which, if he thought of them, would cause him to blush for shame. But if emotions enter into the interest we take in the characters of a tragedy, the reason is less because those characters are heroes and kings than that they are unfortunate men. Is it the Queen of Messina who appeals to my emotions in Merope? No, it is the mother of Ægisthus: nature alone claims sovereignty over our hearts.
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