breakdown of the elements of tragedy, “much of his categorization shapes the basis for our discussion even today” (Sporre 108). Tragic heroes were larger than life and their fall comes about from their own tragic flaw, one they cannot control. The tragic flaw is important because it influence many tragedies written long after the fall of Greece and Rome. The tragic flaw is inherently a part of each main character in Shakespeare’s tragedies. Lear’s is pride, Macbeth’s is ambition, Othello’s is jealousy. However, the elements of tragedy defined by Aristotle also tell us much about Greek society and worldview, “For Aristotle a tragic fall is grounded in a consistent and harmonious sense of a man’s responsibility for his nature and his actions: when the hero falls, he falls for his own failure, and behind the rightness of his fall, working both pity and terror by the precise and relentless nature of its operations, stands the order which society and a god-informed world impose upon the indivi
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