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In Athens, in Shakespeare's England, and at Versailles, the hierarchies of worldly power were stable and manifest.

The wheel of social life spun around the royal or aristocratic centre.

From it, spokes of order and degree led to the outward rim of the common man.

Tragedy presumes such a configuration.

Its sphere is that of royal courts, dynastic quarrels, and vaulting ambitions.

The same metaphors of swift ascent and calamitous decline apply to Oedipus and Macbeth because they applied also to Alcibiades and Essex.

And the fate of such men has tragic relevance because it is public.

Agamemnon, Creon, and Medea perform their tragic actions before the eyes of the polis.

Similarly the sufferings of Hamlet, Othello, or Phedre engage the fortunes of the state.

They are enacted at the heart of the body politic.

Hence the natural setting of tragedy is the palace gate, the public square, or the court chamber.

Greek and Elizabethan life and, to a certain extent, the life of Versailles shared this character of intense `` publicity ''.

Princes and factions clashed in the open street and died on the open scaffold.