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Types of Tragedy in British-American Literature

tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering

its main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow

in ancient drama, the unhappy or disastrous ending is the consequence of fate and a tragic flaw in the
main character

other definitions of tragedy:

GREEK TRAGEDY: a classic definition of the term: Aristotle’s Poetics: “the imitation of an action
that is serious and also having magnitude, complete in itself”; he considers tragedy as a form of
drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear; its action is single and complete, presenting the
reversal of fortune

its protagonists are great personalities, they must fulfil high ranks in social hierarchy

they must be admirable but flawed characters, with the audience able to understand and sympathize
with them

written in POETRY: the writer presents incidents arousing fear and pity

catharsis: Aristotle: sweeping away the pity and fear aroused by the tragic action

there must be a superior figure in the play in some ways; the disastrous end results from a mistaken
action

there is a tragic flow: pride of the hero to ignore the warning; breaking a moral law  suffering is
greater than the offence

three main types of tragedy:

TRADITIONAL: the hero or heroine of the play is an extraordinary character, a king, queen,
someone with high social standing gets into tragic situations; the language is verse; profound
emotions and ideas; there are many morals

RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY: derives from medieval tragedy; violent plots and rhetorical speeches;
the frequent use of ghosts and sometimes the five-act structure (in early tragedies); in Shakespeare’s
greatest tragedies: universality

MODERN: kings are not the central figures; language is written in prose; relates to our modern age;
came into being in the 19th century; symbolic figures in society; more focus on non-verbal
expression; the importance of the structure of the plot; light; movements; sound; gestures

In modernist literature, the most fundamental change was the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true
tragedy can only depict those with power and high status

in modern drama moral weakness, social pressure or the inability of coping with unfavourable
circumstances lead to the tragic ending

SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY:

Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his career; his most admired tragedies were
written in a seven-year period between 1601-1608; his four major tragedies are Hamlet, Othello,
King Lear, Macbeth

Shakespeare's tragic protagonists are capable of both good and evil

Renaissance English Literature

there’s a turn in the plot from good/bad to worse

the solution to the problem comes with suffering (not necessarily death)

tone is elevated
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single effect of pain and suffering at the end all previous things are about it

Origin + Medieval times:

• Greek tragedy as a literary genre which gave birth to Western theatrical tradition
• English Renaissance theatre  very important milestone in the history of tragedy
• Significant playwrights: William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John
Webster, Philip Massinger, and John Ford wrote plays unlike any of their predecessors, whether
classical or vernacular.
• audience mixed aristocrats and apprentices
• the writers and their actors brought to the stage a new tragic language, titanic heroes and villains, and
inventive plots that mingled kings and clowns.
• Before the sixteenth century, tragic drama was not played in the streets and halls of medieval
England. What were performed, the mystery plays of the medieval cities and the morality plays of
schools and aristocratic households, did leave their mark on the unique form of tragedy that emerged
in London in the sixteenth century.
• (The other late medieval dramatic genre that shaped Elizabethan tragedy), the morality play was
peopled not by biblical characters but by abstractions, allegorical figures who met in battle over the
destiny of a hero who stands for us all. The morality play emerged in the late fourteenth century, just
when the mysteries were flourishing, > best known: Everyman (late fifteenth century).
• The morality play is a drama with a crisis at its core, whether played out in comic violence and
action or high-flown rhetorical debate.
EVERYMAN

In Everyman the crisis is the coming of death. God summons Everyman to prepare to die, and so he seeks
help from Fellowship, Kinsmen, Goods, and Riches, all of whom betray him. He finds aid in Good Deeds
and Knowledge, as well as his Five Wits, but when the angel of death comes he is left with Good Deeds
alone to bear him to his maker.

Renaissance era

• Renaissance tragedy is made up of: partly medieval mystery, partly morality, partly chronicle play,
partly Seneca, and partly of the classical heroic tradition
• A genre representing the passions and values of a society in the grips of political and social change.
• The mystery plays contributed to the performative style of later tragedy, while also carving out a
space for tragic theatre in the market- place and city space.
• The allegorical morality plays, the stuff of school and court theatres, with their core of moral conflict
and homilies of fall and redemption, reinterpreted the medieval theory of tragedy for ‘‘everyman’’
and helped to define a new tragic political drama.
• What binds together this heterogeneous group of plays is not only their habit of allegory or
personification; it is also the plot pattern of a temptation, fall, and redemption, often centred on the
fate of a single protagonist, who may be a figure of mankind, a king, or a youth whose soul is at
stake.
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 • Renaissance tragedy heroic tragedy

Shakespearian tragedies
- in every part of his career from the beginning he wrote tragedies and these can be categorised
according to chronology, place and quality
- Great Tragedies:
 these are single star-plays: they are about individuals, individual characters as
reflected in the title that is the main character’s name
 they present the troubled part of the heroes’ life which ends in death
 both trouble and suffering originates from the main characters
 the main character is located at the top of social hierarchy (e.g. prince, king or leader
of an army)
 they are not only private but also public people. what happens to them, is not just his
issue  the fate of the main character is universal, affects a whole nation
 there are also funny, prose-low characters in these plays which gives a kind of
relaxation to the tragic tension
 as long as love is present there is no chaos

SHAKESPEARE - MACBETH

The parallel between the little world of an individual and the larger world of the state finds explicit
expression in terms of bodies and diseases in all the mature tragedies.

In Macbeth, for example, Shakespeare presents a ‘‘Doctor of Physic’’ as a character, commenting on the
illness that besets Lady Macbeth. After witnessing her guilt- ridden sleepwalking, the Doctor connects her
troubles with Scotland’s.

In this Scottish play, England, ruled by Edward is itself a medicine, its monarch a physician. Edward cures
with his touch the ‘‘wretched souls’’ that suffer from scrofula, the king’s evil

When Macduff learns that his wife and children have been massacred by Macbeth’s agents, Malcolm urges
him to join the rebellion against Macbeth: ‘‘Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge / To cure this
deadly grief’’ (4.3.215-16).

Marlowe’s exposure of the use of the language of the body politic by self-interested agents allows us to
question whether Malcolm really is the cure, whether he offers Scotland a return to a time when, as Macbeth
wistfully puts it, ‘‘humane statute purged the gentle weal’’ (3.4.77).

Revenge Tragedy (can be Macbeth)

• Typically it chooses to explore the conflict between law and revenge by imagining some crisis in
which the state proved either unable or unwilling to satisfy an individual’s demand for retribution.
• a man seeking justice for unpunished crime he is an agent of the very principles on which the civil
society depends for its survival; yet his wild appearance bespeaks a social alienation that will drive
him to extremes of destructive violence.
American Literature:

• American playwrights who chose tragedy as their genre were writing against cultural expectations in
the twentieth century, but the absence of tragedy was not quite so complete as this account suggests.
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 • In fact, a revival of the genre was taking place during the period from 1925 to 1960, which produced
the United States’ most distinguished tragedies, including Death of a Salesman.
Death of a Salesman (1949)

• The play attempts to raise a counterexample to Aristotle's characterization of tragedy as the downfall
of a great man: In this sense, Miller's play represents a democratization of the ancient form of
tragedy; the play's protagonist is himself obsessed with the question of greatness, and his downfall
arises directly from his continued misconception of himself as someone capable of greatness, as well
as the unshakable conviction that greatness stems directly from personal charisma or popularity
• because of false ideas Willie chooses the wrong carrier, ruins himself (he would've been happy if he
had chosen another carrier)
• the illusion of the American Dream  society forces it upon individuals
• it leads to tragedy (mental collapse, suicide) when the individual doesn't know himself and cannot
face reality (Willie is not cut out for his job)
• Willie enforces in his sons (Biff and Happy) wrong ideas: Biff realises what he wants but his father
measures everything by the money that can be earned with it
• conflicts:
o Willie vs Ben (brother): Willie hallucinating
o Willie vs Willie (lies to himself)
o Willie and Linda (wife): Linda reminds him of reality
• Is Willie a hero?  sacrifices himself, his last chance to save his family (insurance), he commits
suicide BUT: in this case the family won't get the money

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

• Each of his heroes destroys himself through his compulsion to act. Willy Loman commits suicide in
order to get the insurance money that he thinks will enable.
• His son Biff to fulfil the destiny he imagines for him: ‘‘Can you imagine that magnificence with
twenty thousand dollars in his pocket?...I always knew one way or another we were gonna make it,
Biff and I!’.
• Willy’s tragedy is that he is born to a kind of bad faith. His talent is working with his hands –But he
can’t be a carpenter, because, as he tells Biff, even his father was better than a carpenter. In
America, everyone has to be better than his father.
• Willy has to pursue the goal of ‘‘Success.’’  This concept of success severely limits his self-
conception and his freedom. As his son Hap says, Willy had ‘‘the only dream you can have – to
come out number-one man’’
• There is learning in the play, on the part of Biff, who comes to realize that Willy had ‘‘the wrong
dreams and he rejects these. The tragic irony is that Willy sees the revelation of Biff’s love for him
not as an alternative to the ‘‘law of success,’’ but as an incentive to trade his life for a $20,000
insurance policy.
• It is too late for Willy to be enlightened  Miller sees the United States as a nation that has the
wrong dreams, that is in thrall to the law of success. His hope is to provide a vision of the
opportunity for ‘‘a thrust for freedom’’ by the audience, for ‘‘in the tragic view the need of man to
wholly realize himself is the only fixed star’’ and ‘‘the final result’’ of a tragedy ‘‘ought to be the
reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal.
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