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A study of shakespeare and English Tragedy or Disscuss shakespeare's contribution to the dvelopment of English Tragedy
Introduction
Shakespeare is an unforgettable literary figure and it is not exaggeration if we say that literature is nothing without him. Unfortunately very little is known about him, he is known for what he wrote.
All the writing of Shakespeare deal with love, life and death and these universal themes get beautiful touch by him. His poetry and dramas reflect that he had extraordinary knowledge of human psychology. Therefore, his characters have become memorable in the field of literature.
Shakespeare explored poetry and drama but it is drama that brought fame for him. Even his dramas are poetically crafted. Poetry is inseparable from his writing. He has given immortal lines. "To be or not to be" is oft quoted line from "Hamlet" that is reflected in a modern man who is caught in the same idea of perplexity.
Shakespeare was influenced by the Roman tragic dramatist Seneca and by the medieval ‘mystery' plays. Seneca dealt with the theme of revenge and showed blood and horrible deeds on the stage without hesitation. Seneca was admired greatly in England at the time of renaissance. Numbers of tragedies were written following his style.
Shakespeare very much enjoyed making fun of the languages of scholars and courtiers. This is probably the reason why in some of his dramas we find the use of pun.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH TRAGEDY;
The word "tragedy" appears to have been used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from (Classical Greek τραγῳδία), contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song", which comes from tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to sing" (cf. "ode"). Scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animal's ritual sacrifice.[9] In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis (2nd-3rd c. AD) says that the original form of the word was trygodia from trygos (grape harvest) and ode (song), because those events were first introduced during grape harvest[10].
Writing in 335 BCE (long after the Golden Age of 5th-century Athenian tragedy), Aristotle provides the earliest-surviving explanation for the origin of the dramatic art-form in his Poetics, in which he argues that tragedy developed from the improvisations of the leader of choral dithyrambs (hymns sung and danced in praise of Dionysos, the god of wine and fertility):[9]
At any rate it originated in improvisation—both tragedy itself and comedy. The one tragedy came from the prelude to the dithyramb and the other comedy from the prelude to the phallic songs which still survive as institutions in many cities. Tragedy then gradually evolved as men developed each element that came to light and after going through many changes, it stopped when it had found its own natural form (IV, 1449a).[11]
There is some dissent to the dithyrambic origins of tragedy mostly based in the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested. Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872).
As was noted in the discussion of the Iliad, the word "tragedy" refers primarily to tragic drama: a literary composition written to be performed by actors in which a central character called a tragic protagonist or hero suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected with the hero's actions. Tragedy stresses the vulnerability of human beings whose suffering is brought on by a combination of human and divine actions, but is generally undeserved with regard to its harshness. This genre, however, is not totally pessimistic in its outlook. Although many tragedies end in misery for the characters, there are also tragedies in which a satisfactory solution of the tragic situation is attained.
The vast majority of Ancient Greek theatrical texts have not survived intact. A small number of works from four Greek playwrights writing during the 5th century B.C. remain fully intact. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
The above-mentioned playwrights are regarded as the most influential by critics of subsequent eras including Aristotle. The tragic and satyr plays were always performed at the festival (City Dionysia) where they were part of a series of four performances (a "tetralogy"): the first, second and third plays were a dramatic trilogy based on related or unrelated mythological events, and the culminating fourth performance was a satyr play, a play on a lighter note, with enhanced celebratory and dance elements. Performances lasted several hours and were held during daytime.
The dramas rarely had more than three actors (all male), who played the different roles using masks. There was a chorus on the stage most of the time which sang songs and sometimes spoke in unison. As far as we know, most dramas were staged just a single time, at the traditional drama contest. Such contests were always held in the context of major religious festivals, most notably those in honor of the god Dionysos, and competed for an honorific prize (such as a tripod and a sum of money) awarded by a panel of judges - usually these were the sacerdotal and civil officers presiding over the particular religious festival. The prize was awarded jointly to the producer, who had financed the staging, and the poet, who was at the same time the author, composer, choreographer and director of the plays.
The actors wore large masks, which were very colourful. Actors also wore thick, padded clothing, and shoes with thick soles. This made them seem larger, so the audience could see them better when seated in the uppermost rows of the amphitheatre.
Roman tragedy ;
The theatre of ancient Rome was heavily influenced by the Greek tradition, and as with many other literary genres Roman dramatists tended to adapt and translate from the Greek. For example, Seneca ,by whom Shakespeare himself was greatly influenced ,Phaedra was based on the Hippolytus of Euripides, and many of the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the most famous Roman comic playwrights, were direct re-elaborations of works by Menander.
When comparing and contrasting ancient Roman theatre to that of Greece it can easily be said that Roman theatre was less influenced by religion. Also, Roman theatre was more for aesthetic appeal. In Roman theatre war was a more common thing to appear on stage as opposed to the Greek theatre where wars were more commonly spoken about. This was no doubt a reflection of Roman culture and habits.
The audience was often loud and rude, rarely applauding the actors, but always shouting insults and booing. Because the audience was so loud, much of the plays were mimed and repetitive. The actors developed a kind of code that would tell the audience about the characters just by looking at them.
· A black wig meant the character was a young man.
· A gray wig meant the character was an old man.
· A red wig meant the character was a slave.
· A white robe meant the character was an old man.
· A purple robe meant the character was a young man.
· A yellow robe meant the character was a woman. (Needed in early Roman theatre, as originally female characters were played by men, however as the Roman theatre progressed, women slaves took the roles of women in plays.)
· A yellow tassel meant the character was a god.
Plays lasted for two hours, and were usually comedies. Most comedies involved mistaken identity (such as gods disguised as humans).
Medieval European theatre
In Europe in the courts of kings and noblemen scripted re-enactments of the Arthurian legends and other romances, usually associated with jousting or tournaments, were popular the early 13th century until the middle of the 14th. By the 16th century the practice had developed into staged theatrical events.[9]
In the Middle Ages, after the fall of Roman civilization, cities were abandoned, southern and western Europe became increasingly more agricultural. After several hundred years, towns re-emerged. The Roman Catholic church dominated religion, education and often politics. Theatre was reborn as liturgical dramas performed by priests or church members. Then came vernacular drama spoken in the vulgar tongues (i.e the language of the people as opposed to Church Latin); this was a more elaborate series of one-act dramas enacted in town squares or other parts of the city. There were three types of vernacular dramas. Mystery or cycle plays, like the York Mystery Plays or Wakefield Cycle were series of short dramas based on the Old Testament and New Testament organized into historical cycles. Miracle plays dealt with the lives of saints. Morality plays taught a lesson through allegorical characters representing virtues or faults. Secular plays in this period existed, but medieval religious drama is most remembered today.
Plays were set up in individual scenic units called mansions or in wagon stages which were platforms mounted on wheels used to move scenery. Often providing their own costumes, amateur performers in England were only men, but other countries had female performers. The platform stage allowed for abrupt changes in location which was an unidentified space and not a specific locale.
Among the more notable religious plays were "The Summoning of Everyman" (an allegory designed to teach the faithful that acts of Christian charity are necessary for entry into heaven), passion plays (such as the later Oberammergau Passion Play, which is still performed every ten years), and the great cycle plays (massive, festive wagon-mounted processions involving hundreds of actors, and drawing pilgrims, tourists, and entrepreneurs) York Corpus Christi Play Simulator. The morality play and mystery play (as they are known in English) were two distinct genres.
Since many of the more theatrically successful medieval religious plays were designed to teach Catholic doctrine, the Protestant Reformation targeted the English Renaissance theatre, in an effort to stamp out allegiance to Rome.[10]
Whereas most churches carefully watched over the scripts of their dogmatic plays, in order to ensure that the faithful were being taught the accepted doctrine, by the end of the 16th century Queen Elizabeth I was controlling the stage just as effectively through a system of patronage, licensing, and censorship. Hamlet's reference to a frenetic performance that "out-Herods Herod" refers to the tradition of presenting King Herod as a bombastic figure, suggesting that Shakespeare expected his audience to be familiar with this particular medieval tradition, long after the religious landscape in England had changed.
Puritan opposition to the stage – informed by the arguments of the early Church Fathers who had written screeds against the decadent and violent entertainments of the Romans – argued not only that the stage in general was pagan, but that any play that represented a religious figure was inherently idolatrous. In 1642, at the outbreak of the English Civil War the Protestant authorities banned the performance of all plays within the city limits of London. A sweeping assault against the alleged immoralities of the theatre crushed whatever remained in England of the dramatic tradition.
The medieval tagedy is a prose or poetic narrative, not a drama. Tragedy was perceived as a reversal of fortune, a fall from a high position. This view of tragedy derives from the Medieval concept of fortune, which was personified as Dame Fortune, a blindfolded woman who turned a wheel at whim; men were stationed at various places on the wheel--the top of the wheel represented the best fortune, being under the wheel the worst fortune. However, the wheel could turn suddenly and the man on top could suddenly be under the wheel, without warning.
Elizabethan and Shakespearean Tragedy
A distinctly English form of tragedy begins with the Elizabethans. The translation of Seneca and the reading of Aristotle's Poetics were major influences. Many critics and playwrights, such as Ben Jonson, insisted on observing the classical unities of action, time and place (the action should be one whole and take place in one day and in one place). However, it was romantic tragedy, which Shakespeare wrote in Richard II, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear, which prevailed. Romantic tragedy disregarded the unities (as in the use of subplots), mixed tragedy and comedy, and emphasized action, spectacle, and--increasingly--sensation. Shakespeare violated the the unities in these ways and also in mixing poetry and prose and using the device of a play-within-a-play, as in Hamlet. The Elizabethans and their Jacobean successsors acted on stage the violence that the Greek dramatists reported. The Elizabethan and later the Jacobean playwright had a diverse audience to please, ranging from Queen Elizabeth and King James I and their courtiers to the lowest classes.
Christopher Marlowe's tragedies showed the resources of the English language with his magnificent blank verse, as in the Tragedy of Dr. Faustus, and the powerful effects that could be achieved by focusing on a towering protagonist, as in Tamburlaine. In Elizabethan tragedy, the individual leads to violence and conflict. A distinctly non-Aristotelian form of tragedy developed during this period was the tragicomedy. In a tragicomedy, the action and subject matter seem to require a tragic ending, but it is avoided by a reversal which leads to a happy ending; sometimes the tragicomedy alternates serious and comic actions throughout the play. Because it blends tragedy and comedy, the tragicomedy is sometimes referred to as a "mixed" kind.
Works of Shakespeare
Though there are certainties of Shakespeare's, the First Folio contains thirty-six plays generally attributed to him. Depending upon his growth and experiences there are four different periods of work:
1. Period of Early Experimentation (from his arrival in London to 1595):
It is marked by youthfulness and exuberance of imagination by extravagance of language. Sometimes, there is frequent use of rimed couplets with blank verse. The works of this period are Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labor's Lost and Richard III.
2. Period of Growth and Development (from 1595 to 1600):
This period is marked by artistic work, better plot and fine knowledge of human nature. The work includes the plays like The Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Henry IV.
3. Period of Gloom and Depression (from 1600 to 1607):
This period marks the maturity of his powers. Sonnets, Twelfth Night fall in this period. It is the period where you see the great tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Julius Caesar.
4. Period of Restored Serenity:
The Winter's Tale and The Tempest are the best of his later plays.
The following are the collection of Shakespeare' play's name;
All's That Ends well
2. Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like it
4 .The Comedy of Error
Coriolanus
Cymbeline
Hamlet
Henry- IV
Henry-IV
Henry 8
The Life And of King John
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Loves' Labour's Lost
Macbeth
Measure for Measure
The Merchant of Venice
The Marry Wives of Windsor
The Midsummer Night Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
Othello
Richard-II
Richard-III
Romeo and Juliet
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Winter's Tale
Troilus and Cressida.
Timon of Athens
TRAGEDY OF SHAKESPEARE
· Antony and Cleopatra
· Coriolanus
· Hamlet
· Julius Caesar
· King Lear
· MacBeth
· Othello
· Romeo and Juliet
· Timon of Athens
· Titus Andronicus
The most famous of all plays, some experts suggest, are William Shakespeare's tragedies. These plays were written throughout his entire career, beginning with one two of his earliest plays, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet. Between 1600-1607, a period that coincided with the end of the glittering Elizabethan age and the rise of the Stuart Monarchy, Shakespeare wrote seven more tragic works: Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, and Troilus and Cressida.
Shakespeare's tragedies can be divided into two distinct groups. The love, or "heart," tragedies of Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra and Othello, involve a pair of lovers torn apart by fate and society. In these three plays, the main characters are not masters of their own destiny, but pawns pulled along toward death or permanent separation by forces beyond control. Othello and Troilus and Cressida are considered by some experts to be borderline heart/head tragedies, as they combine elements of both genres.
The remaining "head" tragedies are defined by their relationship to Greek philosopher Aristotle's theories of dramatic tragedy. They feature a fatally-flawed protagonist fully capable of free will who unfortunately has his good traits overcome by ego. The hero of Shakespeare's tragedies is always faced with opportunities for redemption, but never is able to take them in time, leading almost always to death.
Hamlet, and Macbeth both revolve around themes of when and under what circumstances it is correct to seize power. Hamlet, faced with the knowledge that his uncle the king is a traitor and murderer, is still unable to convince himself to take any action, from suicide to regicide. Macbeth is fully aware that King Duncan is a good man and king, but allows prophecy and his own ambition to convince him to kill Duncan and take the throne. Both characters ignore their moral impulses and take the path to their own deaths.
The aging and possibly insane king undertakes a completely different tragic journey in King Lear. In this play, Lear gives away or loses his throne, land, shelter, and even clothes after he fatally misjudges his youngest daughter, Cordelia. King Lear is often considered the most tragic of Shakespeare's tragedies, as Lear ultimately redeems himself, only to suffer the death of Cordelia and himself.
The bloodiest of Shakespeare's tragedies is his earliest, Titus Andronicus, believed to have been written in the 1590s. Titus Andronicus involves a Roman general who sacrifices the son of a defeated enemy. This begins a cycle of vengeful acts, ending with Titus' daughter having her hands cut off and tongue cut out, and her attackers baked in a pie and served to their mother. Titus Andronicus is not typical of Shakespeare's style in any other plays, and is often considered by experts to be Shakespeare's attempt to write an Elizabethan Revenge Play, a popular style in his youth.
Timon of Athens is perhaps the least known of Shakespeare's tragedies. It involves a Greek misanthrope, Timon, who loses all of his money and chooses to blame the city, rather than himself. Timon dies in the wilderness after paying a rebel to continue his assault on Athens. This play is generally disliked by scholars, and some even believe it may be the result of a poor collaboration between Shakespeare and another author.
Shakespeare's tragedies usually share several features. Most begin in an ordered society and move toward chaos, as the hero allows his flaws to rule him. Often, this chaotic change is reflected in the natural world, with storms and strange mists being characteristic. Most importantly, the plays feature heroes whom audiences can identify with and feel sorry for. The protagonist of Shakespeare's tragedies are not villains or saints but generally good people destroyed by their own ego or ill fate.
"A Shakespearean tragedy is a five act play ending in the death of most of the major characters." This statement with others of its kind may accurately describe many of Shakespeare's plays, but if we are looking for the essence of Shakespearean tragedy we must look in an entirely different realm. We cannot merely list the literary devices used, find the ones common to all of Shakespeare's tragedies, and call this collection their essence. We recognize tragedy in literature because we find that it corresponds to a sense of the tragic within us.
The essence of Shakespeare's tragedies is the expression of one of the great paradoxes of life. We might call it the paradox of disappointment. Defeat, shattered hopes, and ultimately death face us all as human beings. They are very real, but somehow we have the intuitive feeling that they are out of place. They seem to be intruders into life. Tragic literature confronts us afresh with this paradox and we become fascinated by it.
From this viewpoint we must look at the literary techniques in the plays not as definitive elements of tragedy but as expressions of it. Thus, hypothetically, someone could discover a long lost Shakespearean play that could truly be considered a tragedy yet lack any or all of the tragic devices common to Shakespeare's existing tragedies. The fact is, though, that certain literary devices recur regularly. Hence we may infer that these are particularly useful devices for expressing tragedy, or at least that they were particularly useful to Shakespeare.
Let us consider several characteristics common to Shakespeare's four great tragedies. Each play is especially concerned with one central figure or tragic protagonist. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth are the protagonists of their respective plays. It is significant that each is the story of a man because the paradox of tragedy in real life is experienced mostly by individual men. Thus as we identify ourselves with the protagonist the sense of tragedy is aroused in us. The protagonist is therefore portrayed vividly as a believable human being. Traits may include strength of character as in Othello, intelligence and cleverness as in Hamlet, foolish vanity as in King Lear, and even treachery as in Macbeth. We are led to identify ourselves with the protagonist as in Hamlet's soliloquies we share the thoughts that only Hamlet knows. Similarly in Macbeth we find ourselves let in on the plot to murder Duncan and we hear the prophecies that motivate Macbeth. Such characterization of the central figures is well suited to expressing tragedy.
Each play contains an element of hope that is disappointed or ambition that is frustrated. Here is the acting out of the disappointment paradox. Macbeth is the most straightforward example. Macbeth murders Duncan with the assurance of good reward. He then enters battle with what again seems to be positive assurance. Only when it is too late does he realize that he is being led to his destruction.
Hamlet also has a central, well considered ambition, but its result is not so straightforward. Hamlet wants to avenge his father's murder, but the whole matter is so entangled with every thing from petty court rivalries to national politics that his success is accompanied by disaster.
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came about. So shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters,of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, and in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads.
Hamlet V ii
Finally, we should consider a very prominent part of all four tragedies: death to the protagonist. Death is important in expressing tragedy because it is at the very heart of the paradox of disappointment. For secular man and even for many religious men death brings final conclusive disillusionment to every meaningful hope. It is the embodiment of defeat. In the tragedies under consideration, death is not used as an extreme expression of human suffering. Rather it is used symbolically to emphasize the disappointment and defeat that accompany it. The symbolic character of death is especially notable in Othello's suicide. Iago's treachery caused several other deaths but not Othello's. Othello's suicide is a response to his despair. The tragedy in Hamlet is not specifically Hamlet's death, but the overall miscalculation and unnecessary bloodshed. Hamlet's own death merely confirms the disaster.
We have said that tragedy deals with one of the great paradoxes of life. It does not propose a solution to the paradox. It does not tell us that life is meaningful in spite of defeat and disappointment, nor does it point to despair and proclaim the worthlessness of our hopes. Rather it affirms the paradox and challenges us with it.
COMPARISON
Early Modern English as a literary medium was unfixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison to Greek and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux. When William Shakespeare began writing his plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration, diplomacy and colonization. By the age of Elizabeth, English had become widely used with the expansion of philosophy, theology and physical sciences, but many writers lacked the vocabulary to express such ideas. To accommodate, writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare expressed new ideas and distinctions by inventing, borrowing or adopting a word or a phrase from another language, known as neologizing. Scholars estimate that, between the years 1500 and 1659, nouns, verbs and modifiers of Latin, Greek and modern Romance languages added 30,000 new words to the English language.[citation needed]
CHARACTERSTICS OF CLASSICAL TRAGEDY;
The vast majority of Ancient Greek theatrical texts have not survived intact. A small number of works from four Greek playwrights writing during the 5th century B.C. remain fully intact.
· Aeschylus
· Sophocles
· Euripides
· Aristophanes
The above-mentioned playwrights are regarded as the most influential by critics of subsequent eras including Aristotle. The tragic and satyr plays were always performed at the festival (City Dionysia) where they were part of a series of four performances (a "tetralogy"): the first, second and third plays were a dramatic trilogy based on related or unrelated mythological events, and the culminating fourth performance was a satyr play, a play on a lighter note, with enhanced celebratory and dance elements. Performances lasted several hours and were held during daytime
Theater
The theater of Dionysus was, like all ancient Greek theaters, an open-air auditorium and, due to the lack of adequate artificial lighting, performances took place during the day. Scenes set at night had to be identified as such by the actors or the chorus; the audience, upon receiving these verbal cues, had to use its imagination. In general, the action of tragedy was well served by presentation in an open-air theater since interior scenes, which are common in our typically indoor theaters, are all but non-existent in tragedy. The action of a tragedy normally takes place in front of palaces, temples and other outdoor settings. This seemed natural to the ancient audience because Greek public affairs, whether civic or religious, were conducted out of doors as was much of Greek private life due to the relatively mild climate of the Aegean area.
The theater of Dionysus in the earliest days of tragedy (late sixth - early fifth century) must have consisted of only the most basic elements. All that was required was a circular dancing area for the chorus (orchestra) at the base of a gently sloping hill, on which spectators could sit and watch the performance (for drawing of theater click on the following: theater). On the other side of the orchestra facing the spectators there probably stood a tent in which the actors could change their costumes (one actor would play more than one part). This is suggested by the word skene which means 'tent', and was used to refer to a wooden wall having doors and painted to represent a palace, temple or whatever setting was required. The wall, which eventually became a full-fledged stage building, probably acquired this name because it replaced the original tent. The construction of the wooden skene (cf. our theatrical terms "scene" and "scenery") and of a formal seating area consisting of wooden benches on the slope, which had been hollowed out, probably took place some time toward the middle of the fifth century. This was no doubt the form of the theater in which the later plays of Aeschylus and those of Sophocles and Euripides were presented. The actors positioned themselves either in the orchestra with the chorus or on the steps leading to the doors of the skene. The theater of Dionysus as it survives today with the remains of an elaborate stone skene, paved orchestra and marble seats was built in the last third of the fourth century BC This stone theater had a capacity of approximately fifteen thousand spectators; the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in the earlier wooden theater were viewed by audiences of comparable numbers.
Two mechanical devices which were part of the ancient Greek theater deserve mention. One device is the ekkyklema 'a wheeled-out thing', a platform on wheels rolled out through one of the doors of the skene, on which a tableau was displayed representing the result of an action indoors (e.g., a murder) and therefore was unseen by the audience. The other device is called a mechane 'theatrical machine', a crane to which a cable with a harness for an actor was attached. This device allowed an actor portraying a god or goddess to arrive on scene in the most realistic way possible, from the sky. The mechane deposited the actor on top of the skene so that he as a deity could address the human characters from an appropriately higher level. This device was not exclusively limited to use by divine characters, but was employed whenever the plot required any character to fly. On the other hand, not every god arrived on scene by means of this machine. The Latin phrase deus ex machina, 'the god from the machine', is often used to refer to the appearance of gods by means of the mechane in tragedy. This phrase is also employed in a pejorative sense in modern literary criticism to refer to an improbable character or event introduced by an author to resolve a difficult situation. This secondary meaning of deus ex machina developed from the practice of inferior ancient dramatists who introduced a god at the end of a play in order to untangle a badly snarled plot.
Actors
The actors in tragedy were hired and paid by the state and assigned to the tragic poets probably by lot. By the middle of the fifth century three actors were required for the performance of a tragedy. In descending order of importance of the roles they assumed they were called the protagonist2 'first actor', (a term also applied in modern literary criticism to the central character of a play), deuteragonist 'second actor' and tritagonist 'third actor'. The protagonist took the role of the most important character in the play while the other two actors played the lesser roles. Since most plays have more than two or three characters (although never more than three speaking actors in the same scene), all three actors played multiple roles.
2In modern literary criticism, the term protagonist refers to the central character of the play, not the actor.
Since women were not allowed to take part in dramatic productions, male actors had to play female roles. The playing of multiple roles, both male and female, was made possible by the use of masks, which prevented the audience from identifying the face of any actor with one specific character in the play and helped eliminate the physical incongruity of men impersonating women. The masks with subtle variations also helped the audience identify the sex, age, and social rank of the characters. The fact that the chorus remained in the orchestra throughout the play and sang and danced choral songs between the episodes allowed the actors to exit after an episode in order to change mask and costume and assume a new role in the next episode without any illusion-destroying interruption in the play.
The main duty of an actor was, of course, to speak the dialogue assigned to his characters. This, however, was not the only responsibility of the actor. He occasionally had to sing songs solo or with the chorus or with other actors (e.g., a song of lament called a kommos). The combination of acting and singing ability must have been as rare in the ancient world as it is today.
Chorus
For the modern reader the chorus is one of the more foreign elements of tragedy. The chorus is not one of the conventions of modern tragedy. We associate the chorus with such musical forms as opera, musical comedy and oratorio. But tragedy was not just straight drama. It was interspersed with songs sung both by actors and chorus and also with dancing by the chorus. The modern parallel for tragedy is actually opera (along with its descendant, musical comedy), which is a dramatic form containing song and dance.
The chorus, unlike the actors, were non-professionals who had a talent for singing and dancing and were trained by the poet in preparation for the performance. The standard number of members of a chorus was twelve throughout most of Aeschylus's career, but was raised to fifteen by Sophocles. The chorus, like the actors, wore costumes and masks.
The first function of a tragic chorus was to chant an entrance song called a parodos as they marched into the orchestra. The entrance song took its name from the two ramps (parodoi) on either side of the orchestra which the chorus used as it made its way into the orchestra. Once the chorus had taken its position in the orchestra, its duties were twofold. It engaged in dialogue with characters through its leader, the Coryphaeus, who alone spoke the lines of dialogue assigned to the chorus. The tragic chorus's most important function was to sing and dance choral songs called stasima (singular = stasimon). The modern reader of Greek Tragedy, whether in English or even in the original Greek, finds it very difficult to appreciate the effect of these choral songs which are devoid of their music and dance.
Structure
Tragedy has a characteristic structure in which scenes of dialogue alternate with choral songs. This arrangement allows the chorus to comment in its song in a general way on what has been said and/or done in the preceding scene. Most tragedies begin with an opening scene of expository dialogue or monologue called a prologue.
After the prologue the chorus marches into the orchestra chanting the parodos. Then follows a scene of dialogue called an episode, which in turn is followed by the first stasimon. The alternation of episode and stasimon continues until the last stasimon, after which there is a final scene of dialogue called an exodos 'exit' scene'. The exodos is in general a scene of dialogue, but, as in the case of episodes, sometimes songs are included, especially in the form of a kommos.
Here is the structure of a typical tragedy (some tragedies have one more or one less episode and stasimon)3:
· Prologue
· Parodos
· First Episode
· First Stasimon
· Second Episode
· Second Stasimon
· Third Episode
· Third Stasimon
· Fourth Episode
· Fourth Stasimon
· Exodos
·
Four Characteristics of a Tragic Hero
(According to Aristotle's Poetics)
1. POSITION. The hero is royal or noble with great power, usually a king. He is a good, respected man who acts out of good intentions. He has much to lose.
2. TRAGIC FLAW (hamartia). In spite of his good intentions, the hero makes a tragic error which causes his reversal. The error usually stems from a character flaw, usually pride.
3. REVERSAL (catastrophe). Because of his tragic error, the hero suffers a downfall from his happy, envied position to suffering and misery.
4. RECOGNITION (catharsis). The hero realizes that his own flaw or error has caused his reversal. This recognition always occurs too late for the hero to prevent or escape his reversal.
Three Unities of a Tragedy
(According to Aristotle's Poetics)
1. TIME. The entire play should take place within one day.
2. PLACE. The entire play should be set in a single place.
3. ACTION. The play should have only a single plot-no sub-plots.
Three Great Greek Tragedians
Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) Sophocles (496-406 B.C.) Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Sophocles's Theban Trilogy
Oedipus the King (written second) Oedipus at Colonus (written last) Antigone (written first)
CHARACTERSTICS OF MORDERN TRAGEDY;
Drama gets a rebirth in the modern age .After hundred years of insignificance; drama appeared as an important literary form. The great dramatists created significant drama out of the problems of the age. Like the novelist, the most of the significant dramatists were chiefly concerned with the contemporary social sense
In modern literature, the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status. Arthur Miller's essay 'Tragedy and the Common Man' exemplifies the modern belief that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings. A Doll's House (1879) by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, which depicts the breakdown of a middle-class marriage, is an example of a more contemporary tragedy. Like Ibsen's other dramatic works, it has been translated into English and has enjoyed great pop
Ordinary people in tragic situations, all central characters die or destroyed in the end.
styles:
1. Meaning of Modern Tragedy: ordinary people in tragic situation.
2. Modern Tragedy: dark scenes, dark faces, everyone is destroyed or die.
3. Modern Tragedy: funny at the loss of humanity, laughter without substance.
4. Modern Tragedy: everything is simplified. People are stripped down to what is essential.
5. Modern Tragedy: must fall from the throne.
6. Modern Tragedy: they don't have to look real, real in essence, any action is simple.
7. Must fall from the throne.
8. Person in high position, falls to great depth. All central characters die or are destroyed.
9. They don't have to look real, real in essence, any action is simple.
10. Tragedy has to go beyond Drama. Tragedy has to bring on emotionally more than drama, it has to bring catharsis. This has got to be an enormous impact on the audience. The audience has to feel disemboweled at the end of the play. That is what tragedy has to achieve. And drama only has to move the audience.
11. The difference between a drama and Modern Tragedy: modern tragedy is to fall from great height all central characters die, no way out of dilemma. Has to be done in stylized manner.
12. Very stylish Modern Tragedy.
"In the end, it can't look like acting."
The climax of a narrative work is its point of highest tension or drama. In classical culture, perhaps reflecting in part low literacy levels, analysis of fictional narratives focused on drama, and identified patterns for comedy (in the sense of drama with a "happy ending") and tragedy (in the sense of drama with an "unhappy ending"). The principles involved generally remain important in modern narrate ...
In the Modernist era, a new kind of tragic hero was synthesized as a reaction to the English Renaissance, The Age of Enlightenment, and Romanticism. The idea was that the hero, rather than falling calamitously from a high position, is actually a person less worthy of consideration. Not only that, the protagonist may not even have the needed catharsis to bring the story to a close. He may die without an epiphany of his destiny, or suffer without the ability to change events that are happening to him. The story may end without closure and even without the death of the her ..
The following criticism of the critics shows the difference between Greek, modern and Shakespearean drama
Johnson's preface to Shakespeare is an ever lasting contribution to English literary criticism. According to Johnson the basic requirement of aesthetic grandeur is truthful ness to the facts of nature . He finds this plentiful in Shakespeare. ‘Just representation of general nature' was also a slogan of the neo-classical critics. Johnson says. "Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places. Unpractised by the rest of the world: by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find"
Johnson goes on to praise the characterization of Shakespeare. He says that his characters "act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion". The implication of the neo-classical creed—"just representation of general nature'---is that human nature, at least the refined human nature, is perennial. It is because of this universality that the work of a great artist has an artist has an artistic appeal which continues through the ages. That is why Alexander Pope asserts that the Greed and Roman writers expressed the most exceptional way of emulating nature and that therefore to copy Homer or Virgil was to imitate nature realistically.
The knowledge of general human nature enables Shakespeare to unveil the truths of life and enrich his plays "with practical axioms and domestic wisdom". Shakespeare was none of those who attached too much of importance to the subjects of love with regard to their theme. Other dramatists who concentrate on the subject of love in their works become unjust; and violate the probability. Life is misrepresented by them and the language depraved. Love is only one of the many human emotions and to assign too large a significance to it is unjustifiable. It has little operation in the dramas of Shakespeare who "caught his ideas from the living world and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew that any other passion as it was regular or exorbitant was a cause of happiness or calamity.
Johnson also defends Shakespeare's mingling of tragic y such mingling was objected to by the neo-classicists who were, more or less, obstinate about the purity of genres. The critical trend at the time was to consider tragedy as an unadulterated genre by itself. However, Johnson justifies the mingling of the two on the basis of the neoclassical theory itself. Shakespeare's plays depict a world where all human actions have equal importance ,where all types of human beings are equally represented and where we see without any objections, the reveler hastening to his wine and mourner burying his friend .in this way Johnson meets the objections of neo-classical critics on their own ground
Johnson is not bound by the neo-classical rules of criticism in his approach to various other details of Shakespearean drama. his basic principle is that ‘there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature'. if neo-classical theory insists on some rules, those rules can not outlive the basic-requirement of the neo-classical theory,namely,that literate should imitate nature on perhaps unwittingly, points out a possible contradiction in the critical theory of his time .Johnson was particular about the didactic function along with the imitative one. The aim of a work is to please and instruct its readers. Johnson admits that Shakespeare has not shown human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trails to which it can not be said to be exposed. But according to him, what Shakespeare lacks is the moral purpose which he should have abided by in his plays. instead of keeping track of morality, Shakespeare ‘sacrifices virtue to convenience' and is ‘much more careful to please than to instruct'. he also feels that Shakespeare is careless about awarding his vicious characters with sorrow and the good characters with happiness.
Johnson defends Shakespeare's disregard for the unities of time and place. The neo-classical insistence on the unities meant that a play on the stage should include only those events which cover the limited time of twelve or twenty four hours and occur in a single place. Thus the drama had to be cut short and brought under the prescribed framework and the actual experience is almost nullified. The profoundest of this law held that any depiction differing from these rules is not acceptable .but Shakespeare was not a slave to myth traditional etiquettes. Justifying him Johnson says that the action of these plays is based on certain conventions which the audience accepts readily .'The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises the supposed necessity of making of the drama credible. But the truth is that the spectators are always in their sense and that the players are only players where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens ,and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens ,but a modern theatre?' True, this doesn't seen to be an absolutely original remark, but it could not have been expressed more effectively .furthermore, its importance lies in the fact that it came in opposition to the prevalent critical views.
However, W.K Wimsatt puts it unwell when he observes; Here we have a response to Shakespeare in the most direct, the least theoretical fashion. No doubt we learn more about Johnson in such confrontations than about Shakespeare'.
Coleridge;
Coleridge is one of the greatest critics of Shakespeare. He first delivered a series of lectures on Shakespeare in 1808,but the series has been largely lost . Then he delivered another series of lectures on Shakespeare from 1811-12, which was published subsequently in 1849 and which is our main source of information about Coleridge's view on Shakespeare. Beside this there are stray reference to Shakespeare of a great value and significance in the Biographia literaria itself.
His past object was to overthrow the pernicious classical doctrine that Shakespeare's plays are remarkable only because the splendor of the parts compensates for the barbarous shapelessness and irregularity of the whole; in all the successive course of lectures delivered by me, since my first attempt at royal institution, it has been, it still remains, my object to prove that in all poems from the most important to the most minute, the judgment of Shakespeare is commensurate with his genius –nay, that his genius reveals itself in his judgments, as in its most exalted form. this he does once and for all when he explains how ‘the true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical regularity with organic form; that Shakespeare's form is not mechanically impressed from without ,but like natural form is organic, shaping itself as it develops from within
T.S Eliot;
T.S Eliot is of the opinion that anyone of Shakespeare's play should not be examined separately. It would not be doing justice to Shakespeare. Each play is a part of the whole, a necessary unit to the entire pattern. He says;
The standard set by Shakespeare is that of a continuous development in which the choice both of theme and of dramatic and verse technique in each play seems to be determined increasingly by Shakespeare's state of feeling, by the particular state of his emotional maturity at that time. What is' the whole man, is not simply his greatest or maturist achievement, but the whole pattern formed by the sequence of plays, so that we may say confidently that the full meaning of anyone of his plays so not itself, alone, but in that play in the order in which it was written, in its relation to all Shakespeare's other plays; earlier and later: we must know all of Shakespeare's works in order to know any of it. No other dramatist of the time approaches anywhere near to Thai perfection of pattern, of pattern superficial and profound, but the measure in which dramatist and poets approximate to this unity in a lifetime works in one of the measures of major poetry and drama(from ‘john ford' 1932)
Shakespeare's Influence, Place and popularity
Shakespeare holds the foremost position in the world's literature. His works and genius includes all the world of men and nature. The study of nature in his work is nothing but exploring a new country and the study of man in his works is just like visiting a great city. His works shows that good always overcomes evil in the long term.
Goethe expresses the influence of Shakespeare by saying that "I do not remember that any book or person or event in my life ever made so great an impression upon me as the plays of Shakespeare." The following lines are perfectly suited to him:
His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "this was the man!"
after all Johnson has rightly called that Shakespeare, at least above all modern writers , the poet of nature ;the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life
About the Author
Khan Mohammad Johirul Islam Rayhan,born in a middle class muslim family at the village Kandal of comilla district of Bangladesh, was a noughty boy from his early age because of which he was careless of study at the first potion of his life.But after passing a period of unconcious time almighty turned his mind into serious ,then he becomes attentive,thoughty and serious.He comleted his M.A degree from Islamic University, Kustia with honour in 2010 and also continuing hons degree in English in Dhaka college,Dhaka(national university of Bangladesh).The writer has also achieved IT scholarship of IDB in 2010.
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