TRAGEDY


Aristotle, in the Poetics, laid out a standard pattern for TRAGEDY, which all later playwrights have either followed or reacted against, but no one is able to ignore it.
 

  1. The PROTAGONIST is a highly placed man (or woman), one of high rank, power, or fortune.
  2. He suffers a CATASTROPHE [Greek peripeteia], reversal of fortune, or downfall. He suffers beyond what most people endure. As Aristotle said, his suffering is meant to arouse both pity (for the protagonist) and fear (for themselves being made to suffer) in the audience.
  3. His downfall is brought about by a choice or series of choices that are due to a TRAGIC FLAW in his character (HAMARTIA). In short, he brings about his own downfall. The most common example of hamartia is sinful, overweening PRIDE, or HUBRIS [sometimes rendered as hybris], but there are other possible tragic flaws, e.g., willful stubbornness, disobedience, fanaticism, spiritual or mental blindness.
  4. The protagonist recognises his own flaw in a scene of self-recognition.
  5. This spectacle provides an emotional release, or CATHARSIS, for the audience.
  6. The action of the classical drama is bound by the three UNITIES of time, place, and action. The drama takes place in one area, in one day, and all the action is sequential, involving only one protagonist. In short, there is only one PLOT. In later forms of drama, the unity of action was dissolved and one or more SUB-PLOTS might be found in the same play.


In classical TRAGEDY, the protagonist is always a man or woman of magnificence. This is also true in ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDY, which, however, depends on shock and violence for much of its effect. In later ages, the protagonist may be a person of any rank, from a shoe salesman to a king or a powerful businessman. In ROMANTIC  TRAGEDY, the downfall is almost always due to an excess of love or passion. Hence the "star-crossed lovers" theme that has continued in popularity down to the present day.

One device that recurs in many Greek dramas is the deus ex machina (the god from the machine), a device by which the playwright resolves an insurmountable plot complication in order to resolve the drama. Usually a god or goddess actually appears on the stage, but the device may merely be announced to the audience as divine intervention.

Like any dramatic narrative, play, story or novel, a tragedy has:
 introduction
 rising action [plot development or complication]
 climax
 falling action
 resolution [denouement]

Cf. also Elizabethan tragedy, revenge tragedy, tragedy of blood

DRAMA:
Aristotle called drama “imitated human action.” But since his meaning of imitation is in doubt, this phrase is not so simple or clear as it seems. Professor J. M. Manly sees three necessary elements in drama: (1) a story (2) told in action (3) by actors who impersonate the characters of the story. This admits such forms as PANTOMIME. Yet many writers insist that DIALOGUE must be present, e.g., Professor Schelling, who calls drama “a picture or representation of human life in that succession and change of events that we call a story, told by means of dialogue and presenting in action the successive emotions involved.” Dramatic elements have been combined and emphasized so differently in dramatic history as to make theoretical definition difficult.
    Origins: Greek and Roman Drama  —Some account of how drama originated and how it has developed will perhaps throw more light upon its nature. Drama arose from religious ceremonial. Greek COMEDY developed from those phases of the Dionysian rites which dealt with the theme of fertility; Greek TRAGEDYcame from the Dionysian rites dealing with life and death; and mediaeval DRAMA arose out of rites commemorating the birth and the resurrection of Christ. These three origins seem independent of each other. The word COMEDY is based upon a word meaning “revel,” and early Greek comedy preserved in the actors’ costumes evidences of the ancient phallic ceremonies.  Gradually comedy developed away from this primitive display of sex interest in the direction of greater decorum and seriousness, though the “Old Comedy” was gross in character. SATIRE became an element of comedy as early as  sixth century B.C. Menander (342-291 B.C.) is a representative of the "New Comedy" — a more conventionalized form which was imitated by the great Roman writers of COMEDY, Plautus and Terence, through whose plays classical COMEDY was transmitted to the Elizabethan dramatists.
    The word TRAGEDY seems to mean a "goat song," and may reflect Dionysian death and resurrection ceremonies in which the goat was the sacrificial animal. The DITHYRAMBIC chant used in these festivals is perhaps the starting point of TRAGEDY. The possible process of development has been thus stated by Professor Nicoll:

From a common chant the ceremonial song developed into a primitive duologue between a leader, dressed probably in the robes of the god, and the chorus. The song became elaborated; it developed narrative elements, and soon reached a stage in which the duologue told in primitive wise some story of the deity. Further forward movements were introduced. Two leaders instead of one made their appearance. The chorus gradually sank into the background, no longer taking the place of a protagonist.
The great Greek authors of TRAGEDIES were Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), and Euripides (480-406 B.C.).  Modelled on these were the Latin CLOSET DRAMAS of Seneca (4? B.C.-A.D. 65), which exercised a profound influence upon Renaissance TRAGEDY.

Rebirth of Drama in the Middle Ages The decline of Rome witnessed the disappearance of acted classical DRAMA. The MIME survived for an uncertain period, and perhaps aided in preserving the tradition of acting through wandering entertainers (see JONGLEUR, MINSTREL). Likewise, dramatic ceremonies and customs, some of them perhaps related to the ancient Dionysian rites themselves, played an uncertain part in keeping alive in mediaeval times a sort of substratum of dramatic consciousness.  Scholars are virtually agreed, however, that the great institution of MEDIAEVAL DRAMA in Western Europe, leading as it did to modern drama, was a new form which developed, about the ninth and following centuries, from the ritual of the Christian Church (see MEDIAEVAL DRAMA). The dramatic forms resulting from this development, MYSTERY or CYCLIC PLAYS, MIRACLE PLAYS, MORALITIES, flourishing especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, lived on into the RENAISSANCE.

Renaissance English Drama —The new interests of the RENAISSANCE included TRANSLATIONS and IMITATIONS of classical DRAMA, partly through the medium of SCHOOL and UNIVERSITY PLAYS, partly through the work of university-trained professionals, engaged in supplying dramas for the public stage or the court or such institutions as the INNS OF COURT, and partly through the influence of classical dramatic CRITICISM, much of which reached England through Italian scholars. Thus a revived knowledge of ancient drama united with the native dramatic traditions developed from mediaeval forms and technique to produce in the later years of the sixteenth century the vigorous and many-sided phenomenon known as ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, with its spectacular and patriotic CHRONICLE PLAYS, its TRAGEDIES OF BLOOD, its light-hearted COURT COMEDIES, its dreamy and delightful ROMANTIC COMEDIES, its PASTORAL PLAYS, satirical plays, and realistic presentations of London life.


ELIZABETHAN DRAMA: This phrase is commonly used for the entire body of RENAISSANCE English DRAMA produced in the century preceding the closing of the theatres in 1642, although it is sometimes employed in a narrower sense to designate the DRAMA of the later years of Elizabeth's reign and the few years following it. Thus, Shakespeare is an Elizabethan dramatist, although more than one third of his active career lies in the reign of James I. Modern English DRAMA not only came into being in Elizabethan times but developed so rapidly and brilliantly that the Elizabethan era is the Golden Age of English DRAMA.
  Lack of adequate records makes it impossible to trace the steps by which Elizabethan drama developed, though the chief elements which contributed to it can be listed. From MEDIAEVAL DRAMA came the TRADITION of acting and certain CONVENTIONS approved by the populace. From the MORALITY PLAYS and the INTERLUDES in particular came comic elements. With this mediaeval heritage was combined the classical TRADITION of DRAMA, partly drawn from a study of the Roman dramatists, Seneca (tragedy) and Plautus and Terence (comedy), and partly from humanistic CRITICISM based upon Aristotle and transmitted through Italian RENAISSANCE scholarship. This classical influence appeared first in the SCHOOL PLAYS. Later it affected the DRAMA written under the auspices of the royal court and the INNS OF COURT. Eventually it influenced the plays of the university-trained playwrights connected with the public stage. Indeed, the part played by the UNIVERSITY WITS in adapting classical dramatic materials to the demands of of the popular stage seems to have advanced dramatic technique to a point where it was ready for the perfecting touch of the master dramatist himself. The modern theatre arose with Elizabethan drama
(see PUBLIC THEATRES, PRIVATE THEATRES). For types of Elizabethan drama and names of dramatists see Outline of Literary History (pp. 532-541) and TRAGEDY, ROMANTIC TRAGEDY, CLASSICAL TRAGEDY, TRAGEDY OF BLOOD, COMEDY, COMEDY OF HUMOURS, COURT COMEDY, REALISTIC COMEDY CHRONICLE PLAY, and MASQUE.

REVENGE TRAGEDY: A form of TRAGEDY made popular on the Elizabethan stage by Thomas Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy is an early example of the type. It is largely SENECAN in its inspiration and technique. The theme is the revenge of a father for a son or vice versa, the revenge being directed by the ghost of the murdered man, as in Hamlet. Other traits often found in the revenge tragedies include the hesitation of the hero, the use of either real or pretended insanity, suicide, intrigue, an able, scheming villain, philosophic soliloquies, and the sensational use of horrors (murders on the stage, exhibition of dead bodies, etc.). Examples of the type are Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Marston's Antonio's Revenge, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hoffman (author not known), and Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy.  See SENECAN TRAGEDY, TRAGEDY OF BLOOD. 

TRAGEDY OF BLOOD: An intensified form of the REVENGE TRAGEDY popular on the Elizabethan stage. It works out the theme of revenge and retribution (borrowed from Seneca) through murder, assassination, mutilation, and downright carnage. The horrors which in the Latin Senecan plays had been merely described were placed upon the stage to satisfy the craving for morbid excitement displayed by an Elizabethan audience brought up on bear-baiting spectacles and public executions (hangings, mutilations, burnings). Besides including such revenge plays as Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and Hamlet, the tragedy of blood led to such later "horror" TRAGEDIES as Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil. See REVENGE TRAGEDY, SENECAN TRAGEDY.