The concept of grace in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and Racine's "Athalie"

The design of both Macbeth and Athalie asserts the triumph of the spiritual over the temporal in the sense that both plays demonstrate the way in which the recipients of grace become the means through which divine providence chooses to work. At the opposite end of the scale of grace we find the self-seekers. Like Shakespeare, Racine does not focus on the cause, but on the nature of a corrupt will. In each case the protagonist is shown to possess an overreaching desire for self-aggrandizement and a determination towards the acting out and enforcement of their personal will. Both plays end with a coup de theatre, a kind of dramatic 'trick' which symbolizes the illusory nature of the protagonists' power-seeking