This study shows that Hegel’s philosophy of tragedy casts Hamlet and Macbeth as paradigms of modern (or “romantic”) tragedy. Modern tragedy, for Hegel, features internal conflicts within the hero’s soul rather than clear external clashes. In Hamlet, the collisioncollision () is between Hamlet’s inherited duty (vengeance for his father) and his emerging self-conscious rationality; this stands for the disintegration of Denmark’s feudal ethical order (Sittlichkeit) (ethical life).