Robert B. Heilman explores the fact that the three plays were written back to back within a time period of 3 years (1603-1606) and how Shakespeare takes "anagorisis" one step further in each play. Beginning with Othello, it's not until the end of the play that he discovers the truth of his situation and reflects on his horrible acts. At the beginning of King Lear, Lear "explodes into injustice...so that more than four acts of the play are left for the drama of self-understanding." But, with Macbeth, he was fully aware of what was right and true but he was constantly trying to escape from self-consciousness. Heilman argues:
"When a protagonist 'knows' that his course is morally intolerable, but strains frantically against that knowledge lest it impair his obsessive pursuit of the course, the tension between knowing and willing may itself destroy him."and alternatively that "self-knowledge would be an appropriate magnanimity, a grace of spirit, or a mode of salvation."
When I have read a tragedy, I've always tried to keep in mind the flaw of the "tragic hero" but can't help feeling like they're more of a victim than the cause of their circumstances. There always seems to be other characters manipulating them or pushing them towards destruction. After reading this article that focuses on the psychology of the tragic hero, I have to agree that these men are all intelligent, political leaders that try to blind themselves from the reality of themselves--that, ultimately is their downfall. I like how Heilman ended the article:
"It would be supererogatory [beyond what is needed] to praise these different dramatizations of a psychological realism whole validity we sense even more strongly, perhaps, after four hundred years."
