Tragedy I INTRODUCTION Euripides Unlike other 5th-century BC Greek playwrights, tragic poet Euripides addressed the plight of the common people, rather than that of mythic heroes. Although contemporaries sharply criticized his unconventionality, the surviving works of Euripides have become classics, significantly influencing later European drama and poetry. Corbis Tragedy, dramatic genre that presents the heroic or moral struggle of an individual, culminating in his or her ultimate defeat. While serious drama and comedy are found in nearly every culture and time period, tragic plays appear chiefly in societies that maintain a fixed hierarchy of political and religious beliefs. Only when spectators share with the playwright a particular social vision and system of class-based values can they empathize with the fall of the protagonist (central character) from an elevated position into bleak despair or annihilation. II THEORY The Western definition of tragedy and the debate over the function of tragic plays began in Athens, Greece, in the 4th century BC. The philosopher Plato criticized enactments of tragedy as artistically debilitating, because he felt they stirred emotions without encouraging virtuous behavior. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, however, defended the tragic spirit as an ennobling and beneficial force in the Greek-speaking world. For Aristotle, dramatic imitations of tragic events gave meaning and therapeutic relief to a population that questioned divine purpose and the standards of human virtue. In a manuscript that became known as the Poetics (about 330 BC), Aristotle meticulously described the elements and goals of tragedy on the Greek stage. According to the Poetics, the action that animates a tragedy must be stately in tone, complete (brought to a conclusion), and of great moral significance. Every aspect of the tragic performance--plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle--must contribute to these qualities. But among a play's elements, it is plot (with beginning, middle, and end focused on a single situation) that drives the dramatic action. Moreover, Aristotle believed that the finest tragedies achieve their passionate focus through a conflict--both its development and its aftermath--that unfolds during a single day. In Antigone (441 BC?) by Greek dramatist Sophocles, the conflict is that of the individual versus the state, higher law versus a ruler's decrees. The heroine Antigone insists upon burying her brother Polynices in obedience to the laws of the gods. But Creon, king of Thebes, has forbidden the burial of Polynices, who led a revolt against Thebes; the king orders Antigone's death for her defiance. He later reverses his order, having realized that obedience to the gods and loyalty to family come before obedience to the state, but it is too late: Antigone, Creon's son (who loves Antigone), and Creon's wife have all killed themselves. Shocks of reversal, recognition, and suffering elegantly bind the spectator and the seemingly virtuous, if flawed, hero into a cosmic arena of discovery and loss. The audience's natural identification with the protagonist's final agony or painful end--in this case, Creon's loss of his family resulting from his defiance of divine law--purges the community of fear and pity. For Aristotle, tragedy's primary goal had to be therapeutic, stimulating in the viewer an emotional release and purification known as catharsis. Aristotle's prescriptions for the writing of tragedy heavily influenced French and Italian academics and intellectuals during the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). In the 1570s theoreticians known as neoclassicists (because they took inspiration from classical Greece and Rome) interpreted the Poetics to include the unity of place with those of action and time. Thus, not only did the single plot have to unfold in a single day, it also had to take place in a single location. Like-minded scholars limited the tragic heroes to people of royal or other highborn backgrounds. Other social codes of the aristocracy, including a sense of decorum, good taste, and simplicity, augmented the formula for tragedy in the 17th and much of the 18th centuries. In the late 18th century, however, these restrictions on the definition and formulation of tragic plays lessened, for a number of reasons. Among them was a general collapse of the aristocracy's political power in Western Europe and the rise of a middle class. III HISTORY Classical Greek tragedy grew out of theatrical contests held in Athens in the 6th century BC. During morning sessions of the annual winter festival, masked actors performed three related tragic plays and a satyr play, which often mocked the overall serious theme. The social importance of theater competition in the life of Athens cannot be overstated. Private and public patrons gave vast amounts of funding each year to sustain it, and also regulated all aspects of its production. A Tragedy in Ancient Greece and Rome Seneca Seneca was a Roman philosopher, dramatist, and statesman. His tragedies later influenced Renaissance dramatists, including William Shakespeare. The bust of Seneca shown here is a Roman copy of a Greek original. Art Resource, NY Aeschylus is one of the best known of the ancient Greek tragic playwrights. The author of some 90 plays, he established many of the conventions of the tragic dramatic form, which he perfected throughout his career. Aeschylus's skillful use of poetic language and brilliant characterizations effortlessly brought together human and divine characters as creators and participants in a single mythic destiny. The Oresteia trilogy (produced in 458 BC) is among his few surviving texts. The trilogy excited and frightened Athenian spectators unlike anything they had ever seen, as the Furies (avenging goddesses) alighted to exact their retribution on the righteous Orestes, who had killed his mother to avenge her murder of his father. Sophocles, another well-known tragic author, refined Aeschylus's tragic storytelling, infusing his mythic characters with a sense of irony and plausibility. In Oedipus Rex (430 BC?), the horrid fate of Oedipus, who eventually blinds himself, is known to the spectator long before the protagonist unravels his violent and incestuous past. Oedipus's self-conscious vanity and restless nature seem strikingly familiar and plausible, making his self-mutilation at the end of the play all the more unsettling. Euripides, Greece's third great tragic dramatist, wrote the most provocative tragedies yet known, although he was not as popular as Aeschylus or Sophocles because he worked against the expectations of his audiences. His trilogies challenged the accepted mythological canon, exploring different points of view in order to uncover novel and disturbing meanings. His Medea (431 BC), for example, allows the barbarian princess Medea to commit murder and infanticide without earthly or supernatural punishments: At the end of the play, Medea is whisked away to safety in a chariot. Most Roman tragic poets adhered closely to their Greek models, often imitating the grand themes and language of the originals. Seneca, writing in the 1st century AD, also composed dramas on Greek subject matter and themes. But his works had a moral tone, with commentaries on the action punctuating the plays. This moral tone, along with his sensational treatments--witches, ghosts, and dead bodies populate the stage--made evident an innovative vision that powerfully inspired future playwrights. B Tragedy in England and France Shakespeare's Macbeth William Shakespeare, who wrote during the late 1500s and early 1600s in England, is generally considered the greatest dramatist in human history and the supreme poet of the English language. His brilliant works are universally celebrated for their comprehensive understanding of the human condition. In this excerpt from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (recited by an actor), Macbeth meditates on the futility of human endeavors. Macbeth's schemes for gaining power are falling apart, and he has just heard that Lady Macbeth is dead. (p) 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved./Culver Pictures Academies and universities in England during the time of Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, used Seneca's plays as vehicles to teach Latin and rhetoric (the art of using language). When theaters were constructed in London during the late 1500s, Seneca's plays, not the Poetics, formed the artistic foundation of the fiveact English tragedy. Playwrights of the Elizabethan period further violated dramatic codes derived from Aristotle by mixing comic and tragic scenes in their comedies, tragedies, and histories. Dramatist Christopher Marlowe perfected the Senecan and so-called tragicomic models to create such masterpieces as The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588?). The poetic tragedies of William Shakespeare, notably Hamlet (1601?), Othello (1604?), King Lear (1605?), and Macbeth (1606?), also ignored classical Greek conventions. The episodic and multiple unfolding of time, place, and action enhanced Shakespeare's epic storytelling ability. The grandeur and magnitude of his dense language became the expressive means of focusing on tragic character and complex motivation. For actors and spectators alike, identification with the tragic fate of Shakespeare's protagonists allowed for a compelling feeling of cathartic release. His tragedies are the most widely performed serious plays in the world repertoire. French writers of the 17th century carefully observed the dictates of Aristotle and his Renaissance interpreters, in part at the wishes of their aristocratic patrons. Cardinal Richelieu, a statesman and avid literary patron, along with the French Academy he founded (to standardize the French language), decreed the sanctity of the neoclassical unities for all tragedy, without regard for popular taste or theatrical logic. When the historical tragedy Le Cid (1636; translated 1637) by Pierre Corneille achieved immediate success on the Parisian stage, an artistic war erupted. Critics of Le Cid forced its retraction because the play concentrated on character and departed from the neoclassical restrictions on time and place. In the late 17th century Jean Baptiste Racine produced the greatest tragic plays of French neoclassicism; these include Bérénice (1670; translated 1701) and Phèdre (1677; translated 1756). Racine simplified poetic dialogue and action while also satisfying the exacting requirements of court censors and contemporary critics. C Tragedy's Last Stages Death of a Salesman American dramatist Arthur Miller's most renowned work, Death of a Salesman (1949), tells the story of a traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who experiences frustration and failure as he reflects upon his life. The play contains many of the traditional elements of tragedy as defined by Aristotle. After Loman kills himself near the end of the play, his friend Charley speaks these words over the salesman's grave (recited by an actor). © Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved./(p) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Although playwrights continued to produce tragedies in the 18th and 19th centuries, few plays could surpass the theatrical magnificence and emotional resonance of those by Shakespeare and Racine. As Europe's monarchies vanished, so did support and inspiration for dramas about the misfortunes of kings and their royal households. Melodrama, with its sensational, suspenseful plots and stereotypical characters, replaced tragedy. Such plays as Coelina, ou l'enfant du mystère (1800; A Tale of Mystery, 1802) by René Guilbert de Pixérécourt of France offered tales of heroes and heroines who suffer initially but triumph in the end because of their virtue. Audiences of the 19th and 20th centuries required more uplifting fare, and they were more likely to identify with middle-class and underclass characters. The struggles for equality and human dignity in the modern period undermined the average spectator's empathy with highborn protagonists. Playwrights instead investigated questions of social justice and of self-determination. These issues animate the serious dramas of Henrik Ibsen of Norway, August Strindberg of Sweden, and Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams of the United States. Although tragic elements certainly appear in the works of these master playwrights, none of their plays fit the definition of tragedy set down by Aristotle. Contributed By: Mel Gordon Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
