3.

3 Types of Tragedy Drama

There are several types of tragedy drama as in the following part :

a. Senecan Tragedy
Precursors of tragedic dramas were the tragedies by the Roman poet Seneca
(4 BC – 65 AD). His tragedies were recited rather than staged but they
became a model for english playwrights entailing the five-act structure, a
complex plot and an elevated style of dialogue.

b. Revenge Tragedy/ Tragedy of Blood

This type of tragedy represented a popular genre in the Elizabethan age and
made extensive use of certain elements of the senecan tragedy such as
murder,revenge, mutilations and ghosts. Typical examples of this sub-genre
are Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, These play were written in verse
and, following Aristotelian poetics, the main characters were of a high social
rank (the higher they are, the lower they fall). Apart from dealing with violent
subject matters, these plays conventionally made use of dumb shows or play-
within-the-play, that is a play perfomed as part of the plot of the play as for
example ‘The Mousetrap’ which is perfomed in Hamlet, and feigned or real
madness in some of the characters. In line with a changing social system
where the middle class gained increasing importance and power, tragedies
from the 18th century onward shifted their focus to protagonists from the
middle or lower classes and were written in prose. The protagonist typically
suffers a domestic disaster which is intended to arouse empathy rather than
pity and fear in the audience. An example is George Lillo’s The London
Merchant: or, The History of George Barnwell (1731). Modern tragedies such
as Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman (1949) follow largely the new
conventions set forth by the dosmetic tragedy (common conflict, common
characters, prose) and a number of contemporary plays have exchanged the
tragic hero for an anti-hero, who does not display the dignity and courage of a
traditional hero but is passive, petty and ineffectual. Other dramas resusciate
elements of ancient tragedies such as the chorus and verse e.g., T.S.Eliot’s
The Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

c. Tragicomedy
The boundaries of genres are often blurred in drama and occasionally they
lead to the emergence of new sub-genres, e.g., the tragicomedies, as the
name suggests, intermingle conventions concerning plot, character and
subject matter derived from both tragedy and comedy. Thus, characters of
both high and low social rank can be mixed as in Shakespeare’s the
merchant of venice (1600), or a serious conflict, which is likely to end in
disaster, suddenly reaches a happy ending because of some unforeseen
 circumstances as in John Flether’s The Faithful Sherpherdess (c.16090).
plays with multiple plots which combine tragedy in one plot and comedy in the
other are also occasionally referred to as tragicomedies (e.g., Thomas
Middleton’s and William Rowley’s The Changeling. 1622)
Let us considerCyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (c.1607). the tittle as
such as already allocates the play to a spesific genre, the so-called revenge
on the lecherous duke who killed Vindice fianccec because she resisted his
advances. In a rhetorically powerfull speech.
The topic and rhetoric is reminiscent of Hamlet’s philosophical contemplations
but this serious tone is not maintained throughout the scene when Vindice
disguises the skull of his dead fiancee.

The Revenge’s tragedy can easily be perfomed in a comical manner because

there is great comical potential in the way the subject matter is rendered
linguistically and plot-wise.
Tourneur’s play is not exceptional for its time.a number of play in the
Elizabethan and Jacobean period somehow waver between being comedies
or tragedies, and difficulties in classifying plays as ‘either/or’ already induced
contemporary authors to speak about their play as tragicomedies (e.g., John
Flatcher in the preface to his play the faithful shepherdess). This show that
generic terms are somewhat arbitrary and dependent or cuturally defined
conventions, which one needs to know in order to be able to discuss plays
appropriately in their context.

4.6 Sources

The sources here refer to the references of the drama or play is created. Commonly,
the particular story of the play is taken from the sources of other story, such as,
based on true story, inspired by the fairy tale, legend, or folktale. Sometimes, it also
is taken from the story that was written by the other playwrights in the previous
period that the play is modified or added by something improved.