Transcript Shakespeare and Tragedy

Shakespeare and Tragedy
A brief definition of Tragedy
Tragedy is a branch of drama that
treats in a serious and dignified
style the sorrowful or terrible
events encountered or caused by
a heroic individual.
Origins/History of Tragedy
• Original Greek: tragodia (“goat song”) from
Dionysian festivals
• Tragedy from its beginning has dealt in universal
themes of death and disaster connected with
seasonal rhythms
• Original Greek tragedies were performed by a
chorus; later the tragic hero developed
• Aeschylus was the first playwright to use
dialogue
Tragic Theory
• All Greek tragedy drew from familiar myths of
gods and men; therefore the story was already
known
• The point of tragedy was not (and is not) to find
out what happens, but rather to discover and
learn from the changing awareness and
responses of the characters involved – often
resulting in irony
• Many, if not most, major tragic events happened
off-stage and were then commented upon
Qualities of Tragedy
• The plot follows the hero’s involvement in an
intolerable yet inescapable situation, the result
of will, circumstance, ignorance or obligation
• Hero eventually battles the inexorable fate that
ensures an unhappy outcome
• The experience is not entirely negative: it
exposes human grandeur and dignity in extreme
circumstances
• Audience feels both ennobled and chastened –
and achieves katharsis through tears
Development of Tragedy
• Romans (esp. Seneca) essentially stole Greek
tragedy and made it more sensational (and often
more violent)
• Elizabethan playwrights (Kyd, Marlowe) followed
in this tradition
• British adventurism (New World, etc.) influenced
the Elizabethans, especially Shakespeare, to
include a new topic: the rewards and perils of
the over-ambitious hero’s individual
achievement and discovery (pride derived from
Greek hubris)
Shakespeare’s Great Tragedies
• Shakespeare went beyond the drama of his time
to present an imaginative vision of evil and of the
resources with which man confronts evil in his
extremity
• Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are prominent but
imperfect (Hamlet, Lear) and therefore serve as
both compelling individual and symbol of society
• Shakespeare’s trajectory as a writer took him
from the social individual (comedy) to the
burdened individual (history) to the
overburdened individual (tragedy)
Shakespearean Tragedy:
An Outline
1.
2.
3.
4.
A noble hero
Begins in a state of happiness & good fortune
Ends in a state of misery
Through both fate and his own fault (tragic
flaw)
5. The outcome is inevitable once the hero sets
off on his path to destruction
6. Order is re-established by a minor but noble
character