...but does anything distinguish the shakespearean horror itself from the classical counterpart?... the pull back to the summoning of everyman and the democracy of death. during the progress of the shakespearean tragic action the classical image of blasted ecstasy and tragic appallment is gradually replaced with a particularly shakespearean devolution of its horror into the benumbment of the merely ordinary... it is this routinisation of blasted ecstasy that takes these plays somewhat outside of their horror-mongering genre - yet the acknowledged exceptionality of their protagonists keeps them centred on something more than mere wretchedness without magnitude - or at least the shadow cast by our imaginations of them.

from james nohrnberg, "about suffering: shakespearean tragedy and the re-invention of a theatre of identity."