A. C. Bradley Quote

Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly.

Shakespearean Tragedy: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth; [lectures]. (ed. 1955)