Shakespeare’s Tragedies

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Melpomene, the muse of tragedy G. Klimt: Tragoedie
 History
Tragedy seems to belong to the western tradition, rather than to other cultures
(George Steiner)
• THE GREEK TRAGEDY
• It seems to come from the words: “goat song”, and it was probably a form of
ritualistic sacrifice
• Aristotle’s theory
• Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus – the great Greek playwrights that set the model
for tragedy
• The focus is on Fate, overpowering and incomprehensible for men
• THE ROMAN TRAGEDY
• Seneca (the greatest influence on Renaissance writers) who focused on excessive
individuals who fall prey to their own inner flaws, a lot of blood and violent acts.
• MEDIEVAL TRAGEDY
• A narrative poem telling the story of the fall of a great man or woman of the past
• Insistence on the importance of FORTUNE
• There is a moral lesson, coming from the fallen nature of men tainted by vice or flaw
MEDIEVAL TRAGEDY 

Tragedy means a true narrative,

As old books make us remember,
  Of one who stood in great
prosperity,
And is fallen out of high degree
Into misery, and ends wretchedly.
And ordinarily they are in verses

  Many are also composed in prose,

And also in meters of many and
various sorts.
(G. Chaucer: The Monk’s Tale)
THE RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY

• Highly indebted to the Senecan view on tragedy

rather than to Aristotle’s theories
• English audiences were familiar with the book The
Mirror for Magistrates (a succession of tragic
English princes and noblemen from the reign of
Richard II to that of Edward IV were made to tell
their sorry stories in their own ghostly persons)
 The two great ages of tragedy

1. The Classical tragedy (Sophocles, Euripides and

Aeschylus)
2. The English and French tragedies , the 16th, 17th
centuries (Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine)
A world infused with a belief in an overpowering
divinity, in which man is seized by forces beyond
comprehension and so the supernatural could
manifest itself
 ARISTOTLE
• Tragedy is not HISTORY because it has UNIVERSAL meaning
“The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would
still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it.
The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the
other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more
philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends
to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal
I mean how a person of a certain type on occasion speak or act,
according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this
universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to
the personages.”(Aristotle)
• Unity of Action, elevated style, katharsis
“Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete,
and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind
of artistic ornament […],; in the form of action, not of narrative;
through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these
emotions.” (Aristotle)
The plot must be self-contained, depending on nothing outside the
play

• Recognition and Reversal of Situation

“Recognition is the change from ignorance to knowledge, producing
love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad
fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of
the Situation, as in the Oedipus…This recognition, combined with
Reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing
these effects are those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents.”
 Aristotle’s tragic hero
• GREATNESS (courage, nobility, honor or anything distinguishing the hero from the others) {no PERFECTION or
VILLAINY}

• The FALL (not produced by evil traits , vice or depravity)

• HAMARTIA (the tragic FLAW= error of judgment, mistake ignorance) → the tragedy starts when ignorance turns into
knowledge

↓
• HYBRIS (a sort of exterior LIMIT the hero oversteps because of this error of judgment) ↓ ↓
FATE DIKE
(Divine law) (Human law)
(NOTE: the hero falls because of his own flaws and frailties, not because of fate)

• DESTRUCTION → KATHARSIS
“Some persons fall into a religious frenzy, whom we see disenthralled by the use of mystic
melodies, which bring healing and purgation to the soul. Those who are influenced by
pity [eleos] or fear [phobus] and every emotional nature have a like experience, . . . and
all are in a manner purged [katharseos] and their souls lightened and delighted.”
(Aristotle)
 THE SENECAN TRAGEDY

• Insistence on violence and the sensational (preference for horrific crimes,

violence, political plots), preference for violent deeds on stage or recounted in
detail on stage
• The development of an elevated rhetoric , long, reflective soliloquies
• His heroes are driven by uncontrollable passions of love, revenge, jealousy and
are conscious wrong-doers.
• The focus on destructive forces heightened by ghosts, furies, different divinities
or the presence of evil rooted in the characters’ past
• Senecan heroes tend to assert their self very forcefully, they are defiant and they
tend to magnify their feelings, often revolting against the universe and the gods.
• A view on the effects of power on the individuals, examining the results of
ambition, fascination for power, tyrannical impulses, as well as the insecurity of
high places as well as the mutability of fortunes
• Division in five acts and the introduction of the “confidant”
 THE ROMANTIC VIEW ON TRAGEDY

• Focus on the inner conflict

• Hegel: the tragedy is a fight between two sides that are properly justified ([…]
The original essence of tragedy consists then in the fact that within such a
conflict each of the opposed sides, if taken by itself, has justification [...] In
this way [...] an unresolved contradiction is set up [...] However justified the
tragic character and his aim, however necessary the tragic collision, the third
thing required is the tragic resolution of this conflict. By this means eternal
justice is exercised on individuals and their aims in the sense that it restores
the substance and unity of ethical life with the downfall of the character who
has disturbed the peace [...] although the characters have a purpose which is
valid in itself, they can carry it out in tragedy only by pursuing it one-sidedly
and so contradicting and infringing someone else's purpose.”)
• Nietzsche: the conflict between the Apollonian (the artistic form) and the
Dionysian (passionate, destructive energy, uncontrollable passions) impulses
 NORTHROP FRYE
• Tragedy is associated with the mythos of autumn
• Depicts the isolation of man caught between human society and the world of
the gods (they are instruments and victims of divine judgment) →the tragedy
ends in the recognition of the law, what it is and what it should be
• The importance of revenge (lex talionis)
• Through his actions the hero breaks the balance of the world. There are ways to
avoid the tragedy, but the hero cannot see them, though the audience can
• Types
1. The tragedy of fate, with a stress on the existence of an supreme exterior
power, impersonal to human strife and effort, but fate becomes an antithetic
force only after it was violated by the hero who sets the tragedy in motion.
2. The tragedy is the result of a violation of the moral, divine or human
law, like a correlation between Aristotle’s hamartia and hubris.
 Northrop Frye – tragedy parts
• ENCROACHMENT – the hero takes on too much, makes a
mistake and thus violates the norms of moral conduct
• COMPLICATION – building up of events
• REVERSAL – it becomes clear that the hero’s expectations are
mistaken
• CATASTROPHE – dramatization of the hero’s wasted life with,
often elaborate subplots that reinforce the feeling of destruction,
evil
• RECOGNITION – the audience (and hero) recognizes the larger
patterns
 THE
SHAKESPEAREAN
TRAGEDY
 THE TRAGEDY IN
RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
• “As practiced in Renaissance England and in classical Greece and Rome, tragedy is an
intense exploration of suffering and evil focused on the experience of an exceptional
individual, distinguished by rank or character or both. Typically, it presents a steep fall
from prosperity to misery and untimely death, a great change occasioned or accompanied
by conflict between the tragic character and some superior power. It might be said,
therefore, that conflict and change – the first intense if not violent, the second extreme –
together constitute the essence of tragedy. (Tom MCalindon)

• Tragedy is an investigation of the effects of power on individuals. Sir Philip Sidney refers
to the fact that the tragedy opens hidden wounds, and makes kings fear to be tyrants: it
stirs the “affects of admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of this world,
and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builded.”

• Influenced by Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe

 Shakespearean tragedy
General Features
• 1. Change and fall – the heroes as well as the society are
submitted to change, transformation, fall from prosperity
• Shakespeare deals with the fate of rulers, with the change of
fortunes, ambition, desire to have the power, political games and
plotting and their effects on the heroes and on the others around
them
• moral and psychological changes occurring when the character
does not recognize his world any longer, and he even cannot
recognize himself
• the fate of one single character
• an enhanced sense of isolation
 3. The Fall of the Tragic Hero
• The Hero is changed, transformed: Hamlet becomes a murdered
from a grievous son, King Lear turns from King to madman,
Macbeth turns from loyal thane to murderer
• The human nature is flawed and doomed to fall
• A dramatization of the effects of excesses (anger, ambition,
pride, sense of honor, jealousy)
• The heroes start questioning their own identity
• The hero’s one-sidedness = “a fatal tendency to identify the
whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind.”
 4. The Villain

The villain influences the decisions of the hero and

helps setting the tragic conflict in motion, but
cannot completely control the decision of the hero
A Tragedy is an irrepressible conflict between two
forces, and the villain symbolizes one of these
forces
The typical Shakespearean tragedy: an inner conflict
 2. Nature and society

• The hero’s change is accompanied by a change in nature: raging

storms, unnatural signs: ghosts, spirits, visions, earthquakes,
strange behavior of animals and birds
– Enhancing the tragic effect (tragic intensifier)
– Signaling that something is wrong in the system (Hamlet, Macbeth)
LENNOX
The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.
MACBETH
'Twas a rough night. (II, 3)
 – Interpreted as signs by other characters (Julius Caesar: gods punish the world)
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction. (Casca, I, 3)
– Accompanying the hero’s fall and his integration in nature (King Lear)
KING LEAR
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul! (III, 2)
 – A disruption in the rhythm of natural activities signals a disrupted system

MARCELLUS
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me? (I, 1)
 – The threat of war, rebellion, civil strife turn ordered societies into chaotic
worlds:
1.Hamlet: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
2.Titus Andronicus
TITUS ANDRONICUS […]
But wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn?
LUCIUS
To rescue my two brothers from their death:
For which attempt the judges have pronounced
My everlasting doom of banishment.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then,
From these devourers to be banished! (III, 1)
 5. Fate

• In Shakespeare, fate is not the only cause of the

tragedy; it only intensifies the tragic effect.
• “fateful accidents” (A.C. Bradley) are “prominent
facts of human life” and tragic intensifiers
 6. The Comic Element

• A requirement of the public taste

• An awareness of the complexity of the two genres,
comedy and tragedy
• Comic relief (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet) or tragic
intensifier (King Lear)
 7. Endings
Promised restoration of order and honoring the dead

ALBANY
Bear them from hence. Our present business
Is general woe.
To KENT and EDGAR
Friends of my soul, you twain
Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain.
KENT
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me, I must not say no.
ALBANY
The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
Exeunt, with a dead march
 The system returns to order (Romeo and Juliet)

PRINCE
A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
 Seeking for recognition and telling the TRUE story
HAMLET
As thou'rt a man,
Give me the cup: let go; by
heaven, I'll have't.
O good Horatio, what a
wounded name,
Things standing thus
unknown, shall live behind
me!
If thou didst ever hold me in
thy heart
Absent thee from felicity
awhile,
And in this harsh world draw
thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.
OTHELLO
Soft you; a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know't.
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus.
The rest is silence!
 The system falls into the hands of people who do not seem worthy to
ensure the balance, but , at least, offer a conclusion for the time
being (Fortinbras, Anthony, Malcolm)

PRINCE FORTINBRASLet four captains

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers' music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.