In it's broadest sense, a tragedy is any calamitous event which results in great loss and/or misfortune. In the dramatic sense, however, a tragedy is something much more specific, more than just a story with a sad ending. A tragedy is a play which deals in a grand poetic style with the misery of man in his higher aspects. The word is of Greek origin, from tragodia meaning literally "goat song" (from the Greek tragos "goat" plus oide "song"). How this strange conjunction occured is lost in the mists of time, but one theory is that it derived from satyric drama, from which tragedy itself evolved, in which the performers were dressed in goatskins to represent satyrs (half-goat beings).
In drama, a tragedy is a plot wherein some inherent flaw in the character of the principal protagonist eventually leads to his or her downfall, and, usally, death. These are elements that can clearly be seen in the greatest of all the dramatic tragedies, those penned by William Shakespeare, eg. Hamlet, King Lear, MacBeth etc. Hamlet's flaw was indecision, Lear's was pride, and MacBeth's was ambition.
Character is not, however, the only key to tragedy. Tragedy also implies resolution, a central action which results in a crisis that ultimately tests and reveals that fatal flaw in the protagonists character. In MacBeth, for example, the test is Lady Macbeth's goading of her husband to murder Duncan (the King) and accede to the throne. The crisis occurs when MacBeth succumbs to his wife's machinations and goes ahead with the murder, thus plunging himself into a downward spiral of killing other would-be kings in order to hide his crime and secure his new-founf position. Ultimately, his crimes are revealed and MacBeth pays with his life.
Aristotlean Tragedy
Tragedy as an art form certainly developed out of the poetic and religious traditions of ancient Greece, where it can be traced back in the city-state of Athens to at least the end of the sixth century B.C. It began as a kind of poetic drama, expressing basic human truths through the medium of mythical or historical events.
By the fourth century B.C., tragedy had become an established art form following a strict formula. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, in his thesis "The Poetics", analysed the meaning of dramatic tragedy and summed it up as "... an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."
Aristotle summarised the elements of tragedy in the following terms:-
After Aristotle
Over the centuries since Aristotle laid down those basic principles, the general character and specific emphasis of tragedy has changed much in different periods of time and different areas of the World. Classical Roman tragedy, for example, whose principal exponent was Seneca, generally followed the Greek pattern but was written to be read rather than acted. In the middle ages tragedy was generally concerned with the downfall of eminent people. Renaissance tragedies, particularly in England, took this further by concentrating primarily on kings and conquerors, eg. Marlowe's 'Tamburlaine' and Shakespeare's 'MacBeth', 'King Lear' and 'Julius Caesar'. Throughout these changes in pattern, however, most of Aristotles principals have remained at the root of all of the greatest tragedies, and certainly of those that have enjoyed the most enduring popularity.
Reproduced below are two period articles describing the meaning of dramatic tragedy as it was known in the Edwardian era.
The Theatre (UK) - September 1st, 1892.
Tragedy Writers and Tragedy Writing
A perfect tragedy is one of the noblest productions of human nature, so is it capable of giving the mind one of the greatest of intellectual entertainments. Seneca said that "a virtuous man struggling with misfortunes is such a spectacle as gods might look upon with pleasure; and such a pleasure it is which one meets with in the representation of a well-written tragedy. Diversions of this kind wear out of our thoughts everything that is mean and little; they cherish and cultivate that humanity which is the ornament of our nature; they soften insolence, soothe affliction, and subdue the mind, to the dispensations of Providence." It is not surprising, therefore, that in the more civilised nations of the world this phase of the drama has met with considerable encouragement.
According to Aristotle, in the Greek tongue iambic verse is the most suitable for tragedy, because while distinguishing the discourse from prose, it at the same time approaches more nearly to prose than any other form of verse; "for," he says, "we may observe that men in ordinary discourse often speak iambics without noticing it." The same observation would apply to English blank verse, which often enters into our common rendering, though we may be unconscious of it, and, being a due medium between rhymed verse and prose, is well adapted to tragedy.
It would seem, therefore, as incongruous for an English tragedy to be written in rhyme as for a Greek or Latin tragedy to be written in hexameters; and this solecism is more pronounced in plays having some acts in rhyme and others in blank verse, which, in the stage's infancy, were considered as two distinct languages. Some writers dignified particular similes only with rhyme, all other parts being in blank verse; others, again, concluded every act with two or three couplets, which produced a pleasing effect, much as an air after a long recitativo in Italian opera affords the singer a graceful exit.
In some parts of old tragedy, also, there was a diversity of numbers, this being intended to break the monotony of a longcontinued modulation of voice; for the same reason in old English tragedy a speech frequently closed with a hemistich, although the following speaker began a new verse. These abrupt pauses, or breakings-off, in the middle of a verse were invariably the rule when expression of feeling was necessary, or in striking an attitude.
Some English poets gave more attention to the style than to the sentiments of their tragedies; their language was noble and sonorous, but the sense (or plot) weak, common-place, and discursive. The contrary is found in some ancient tragedies, especially in Corneille and Racine, in which the thought is that which elevates and ennobles. This defect in English writers was attributed to two causes - want of knowledge and experience, and the necessity of complying with the taste of the readers of their day, who appear to have been better judges of language than of sentiment. A writer of the last century observed that "it might rectify the conduct both of the one and of the other if the writer laid down the whole contexture of his dialogue in plain English before turning it into blank verse; and the reader consider the naked thought of every speech when divested of its tragic ornaments. By this means one might judge impartially of the thought without being imposed upon by the words, and thus determine whether it would be natural or sufficiently powerful for the person intended to utter it - whether it deserved to shine in a blaze of eloquence, or to shew itself in a variety of lights as are generally resorted to by writers of English tragedy."
Again, when the thought is high and elevating it becomes obscured by harsh-sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions with which it is sometimes clothed. Shakespeare is faulty in this particular. Aristotle, when discussing the subject, said: "The expression ought to be very much laboured in the un-active parts of the fable, as in descriptions, similitudes, narrations, and the like, in which the opinions, manners, and passions of men are not represented, for these (the opinions, manners, and passions) are apt to be obscured by pompous phrases and elaborate expressions." Horace (who borrowed many of his criticisms from Aristotle) evidently had this rule in view when writing the following lines:
"Et tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri,
Telephus et Pelcus, cum pauper et exul uterque,
Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,"
"Tragedians, too, lay by their state to grieve,
Pelens and Telephus, exiled and poor,
Forget their swelling and gigantic words,"
Among our English poets there were none, perhaps, more perfect in tragedy than Lee; he would have done better, however, had he not favoured the impetuosity of his genius, but rather had restrained it. His thoughts were specially adapted to tragedy, but were so obscured in a cloud of words, that it required some ingenuity to trace the line of beauty in them - there was an undeniable fire of eloquence, but it was completely hidden by its smoke. Although he shone in passionate parts, his forte lay in epithets and metaphors, with which his writings abound. The following line in Statira's speech, where she describes the charms of Alexander's conversation, combines a three-fold trait of being natural, softened, and passionate:
"Then he would talk: good Gods! how he would talk!"
The broken phrase, so to speak, in this line, changing the description of his manner of talking into an admiration of it, is indeed beautiful, and peculiarly suited to the character of the person that speaks it, the simplicity of the words softening any pride of expression.
Otway followed nature in the language of his tragedy, shining in the passionate parts, perhaps, more than any other English poet matters domestic and familiar giving place to the unreal and farfetched. It has been said that while he was undoubtedly beautiful in the more pathetic parts, he fell into the error of a too great familiarity of phrases, which, according to Aristotle, would have been exalted by dignity of expression. His tragedy of "Venice Preserved" was considered to have lost its charm from the fact that the chief characters were rebels and traitors. Had the hero of this play discovered the same incentives for the defence of his country as actuated him for its ruin and subversion, the audience would have sympathised with and admired the character: but as he was represented, it could only be said of him as the Roman historian said of Catiline; "his fall would have been glorious had he so fallen in the service of his country" - (si pro patria sic concidisset).
In the early part of the eighteenth century there would appear to have been some little objection, giving rise to severe criticism, to writers of tragedy making Virtue triumphant, and not allowing the hero to succumb to his (or her) calamities. This was the outcome of yielding to an opinion held by a powerful few - that there should be an equal distribution of reward and punishment, and an impartial execution of poetical justice. It was objected to, however, on the grounds of having no foundation in nature, reason, or in the practice of the ancients. A writer of that period says: "We find that good and evil happen alike to all men on this side of the grave, and as the primary design of tragedy is to raise commiseration and terror in the minds of the audience, we shall defeat this great end if we always make Virtue and innocence happy and successful. Whatever crosses and disappointments a good man suffers during the progress of the play, they will make but small impression on our minds when we know that in the last act he is to be rewarded with the consummation of all his desires. When we see him in the depth of his sorrows and afflictions, we are apt to comfort ourselves because we know he will find his way out of them, and however great his grief, it will soon terminate in gladness."
Ancient writers, for this reason, treated their characters much in the same way as men are dealt with in every-day life - sometimes rewarding virtue, sometimes leaving her to die in despair - according as they found it in the fable they made choice of, or as they thought would suit the taste of their audience. Aristotle observes, in this connection, that those ending unhappily "always pleased the people, and carried away the prize in the public disputes of the stage." He says, further: "Terror and commiseration leave a pleasing anguish in the mind, and fix the audience in such a serious composure of thought as is much more lasting and delightful than any little transient starts of joy and satisfaction."
It was at this time asserted that only those English tragedies succeeded in which the favourites of the audience sank under their calamities; those in which virtue was triumphant being disapproved, and failures financially. Thus the popular plays were - "The Orphan," "Venice Preserved," "Alexander the Great," "Theodosius," "All for Love," "OEdipus," "Oroonoko," and " Othello." "King Lear" was also popular as Shakespeare wrote it, "but," says a writer at the time, "as it is reformed according to the chimerical notion of poetical justice, in my humble opinion it has lost half its beauty."
A few years later, however, the public taste underwent a change, and the plays which had more pleasant and satisfactory endings were freely patronised, and became more popular than those above mentioned; such, for instance, as "The Mourning Bride," "Tamerlane," "Ulysses," "Phaedra," "Hyppolitus," and most of Dryden's.
These last were followed by an innovation in play-writing, termed "tragi-comedy," which was a purely English introduction. The following stricture will show how it was received: "This tragicomedy is one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet's thoughts. An author might as well think of weaving the adventures of AEneas and Hudibras into one poem as of writing such a motley piece of mirth and sorrow."
The objections made against tragi-comedy were in some measure applied to tragedies having a double plot. For though the grief of the audience be not changed into another passion, as in tragi-comedy, it is diverted upon another object, which weakens their concern for the principal action, and breaks the tide of sorrow by throwing it into different channels."
Still another point for the critic's censure was those speeches termed "rants" - which gave vehemence and violence of action where not intended by the writer, so as to incite the audience to applause. Unnatural exclamations, curses, vows, blasphemies, defiance of mankind, outraging the gods frequently met with a furore of applause, such as more natural, eloquent, or sublimely grand thoughts and actions could not evoke. A writer says: "As our heroes are generally lovers, their swelling and blustering upon the stage recommends them to the fair part of the audience. The ladies are wonderfully pleased to see a man insulting kings or affronting the gods in one scene, and throwing himself at the feet of his mistress in the next. Let him behave himself insolently towards the masculine character, and abjectly towards the fair ones, and he at once becomes a favourite."
As an instance of the foregoing, the hero of the tragedy of "OEdipus" was quietly dismissed, at the end of the third act, after rendering the following lines - lines which should move to emotion and consequent applause:
"To you, good gods, I make my last appeal,
Or clear my virtues, or my crimes reveal;
If in the maze of Fate I blindly run,
And backward trod those paths I sought to shun,
Impute my errors to your own decree:
My hands are guilty, but my heart is free."
On the other hand, his exit at the end of the fourth act was under a thunder of applause, after uttering the execration contained in the following:
"O that as oft I have at Athens seen,
The stage arise, and the big clouds descend;
So now, in very deed, I might behold.
This pond'rous globe, and all yon marble roof,
Meet like the hands of Jove, and crush mankind.
For all the elements," &c., &c.
After a perusal of the foregoing, it will be seen how materially the advance of time has affected the stage - making it more human, more elevating, more real. Ranking amongst the highest forms of intellectual pleasure, it provides cultured facetiousness, and at the same time appeals to the sympathies; also cultivates a taste for the highest grade of the Divine Art, being a school, as it were, for the education of music. What would our forefathers say to look upon it now?
s.
From "The Theory of the Theatre" by Clayton Hamilton
Published by Henry Holt and Co., New York, April 1910
TRAGEDY AND MELODRAMA (Chapter VII, Part 1)
Tragedy and melodrama are alike in this, —that each exhibits a set of characters struggling vainly to avert a predetermined doom; but in this essential point they differ,—that whereas the characters in melodrama are drifted to disaster in spite of themselves, the characters in tragedy go down to destruction because of themselves. In tragedy the characters determine and control the plot; in melodrama the plot determines and controls the characters. The writer of melodrama initially imagines a stirring train of incidents, interesting and exciting in themselves, and afterward invents such characters as will readily accept the destiny that he has foreordained for them. The writer of tragedy, on the other hand, initially imagines certain characters inherently predestined to destruction because of what they are, and afterward invents such incidents as will reasonably result from what is wrong within them.
It must be recognised at once that each of these is a legitimate method for planning a serious play, and that by following either the one or the other, it is possible to make a truthful representation of life. For the ruinous events of life itself divide themselves into two classes—the melodramatic and the tragic—according as the element of chance or the element of character shows the upper hand in them. It would be melodramatic for a man to slip by accident into the Whirlpool Rapids and be drowned; but the drowning of Captain Webb in that tossing torrent was tragic, because his ambition for preëminence as a swimmer bore evermore within itself the latent possibility of his failing in an uttermost stupendous effort.
As Stevenson has said, in his Gossip on Romance, "The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts,—the active and the passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny; anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and dashed we know not how into the future." A good deal of what happens to us is brought upon us by the fact of what we are; the rest is drifted to us, uninvited, undeserved, upon the tides of chance. When disasters overwhelm us, the fault is sometimes in ourselves, but at other times is merely in our stars. Because so much of life is casual rather than causal, the theatre (whose purpose is to represent life truly) must always rely on melodrama as the most natural and effective type of art for exhibiting some of its most interesting phases. There is therefore no logical reason whatsoever that melodrama should be held in disrepute, even by the most fastidious of critics.
But, on the other hand, it is evident that tragedy is inherently a higher type of art. The melodramatist exhibits merely what may happen; the tragedist exhibits what must happen. All that we ask of the author of melodrama is a momentary plausibility. Provided that his plot be not impossible, no limits are imposed on his invention of mere incident: even his characters will not give him pause, since they themselves have been fashioned to fit the action. But of the author of tragedy we demand an unquestionable inevitability: nothing may happen in his play which is not a logical result of the nature of his characters. Of the melodramatist we require merely the negative virtue that he shall not lie: of the tragedist we require the positive virtue that he shall reveal some phase of the absolute, eternal Truth.
The vast difference between merely saying something that is true and really saying something that gives a glimpse of the august and all-controlling Truth may be suggested by a verbal illustration. Suppose that, upon an evening which at sunset has been threatened with a storm, I observe the sky at midnight to be cloudless, and say, "The stars are shining still." Assuredly I shall be telling something that is true; but I shall not be giving in any way a revelation of the absolute. Consider now the aspect of this very same remark, as it occurs in the fourth act of John Webster's tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi. The Duchess, overwhelmed with despair, is talking to Bosola:
Duchess. I'll go pray;— No, I'll go curse.
Bosola. O, fie!
Duchess. I could curse the stars.
Bosola. O, fearful.
Duchess. And those three smiling seasons of the year into a Russian winter: nay, the world to its first chaos.
Bosola. Look you, the stars shine still.
This brief sentence, which in the former instance was comparatively meaningless, here suddenly flashes on the awed imagination a vista of irrevocable law.
A similar difference exists between the august Truth of tragedy and the less revelatory truthfulness of melodrama. To understand and to expound the laws of life is a loftier task than merely to avoid misrepresenting them. For this reason, though melodrama has always abounded, true tragedy has always been extremely rare. Nearly all the tragic plays in the history of the theatre have descended at certain moments into melodrama. Shakespeare's final version of Hamlet stands nearly on the highest level; but here and there it still exhibits traces of that preëxistent melodrama of the school of Thomas Kyd from which it was derived. Sophocles is truly tragic, because he affords a revelation of the absolute; but Euripides is for the most part melodramatic, because he contents himself with imagining and projecting the merely possible. In our own age, Ibsen is the only author who, consistently, from play to play, commands catastrophes which are not only plausible but unavoidable. It is not strange, however, that the entire history of the drama should disclose very few masters of the tragic; for to envisage the inevitable is to look within the very mind of God.
| Author: Don Gillan, www.stagebeauty.net. |
| Primary Sources: Various period newspapers (as mentioned and others). |
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