A Man's Character is his Fate (Heraclitus); For man's greatest offence/ Is that he has been born (Calderon); Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness (Dostoevsky); There is no coming to consciousness without pain (Carl Jung). "Wisdom alone comes through suffering," wrote Aeschylus, and playwrights throughout the centuries have explored this concept, their characters displaying the depth of the human spirit when faced with danger, defeat and, frequently, death. Yet, as the Sufi poet Rumi wrote: "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." The Essence of Tragedy looks at a...