The tragic quality of Macbeth is inseparable from the play's imaginative eliciting of compassion on an explicitly Christian model. A. C. Bradley understood Shakespearean tragedy as inherent in character, and the historicists who reacted to Bradley reaffirmed the importance of religion, but only as historical background. New historicists are more interested in irony than tragedy, and they understand religion as a function of social or psychological relations. Though Macbeth is a murdering tyrant, the play constantly makes us aware of his intense suffering, which he himself identifies with his rejection of grace.
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