The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 21), 1973.
