tragedy

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tragedy form of drama that depicts the suffering of a heroic individual who is often overcome by the very obstacles he is struggling to remove. The protagonist may be brought low by a character flaw or, as Hegel stated, caught in a "collision of equally justified ethical aims."

See also drama, Western ; comedy .

Ancient Tragedies

The earliest tragedies were part of the Attic religious festivals held in honor of the god Dionysus (5th cent. BC). The ritual entailed the presentation of four successive plays (three tragedies, one comedy). Each was based on situations and characters drawn from myth, and the tragedies ended in catastrophe for the heroes and heroines. The most famous ancient tragedies are probably the Oresteia (a trilogy) of Aeschylus , Sophocles ' Oedipus Rex, and Euripides ' Trojan Women.

In his definitive analysis of tragedy in the Poetics (late 4th cent. BC), Aristotle points out its ritual function as catharsis: spectators are purged of their own emotions of pity and fear through their vicarious participation in the drama. The plays of the Roman tragedian Seneca —including Hercules,Medea,Phaedra, and Agamemnon —were established on certain conventions, notably violence, revenge, and the appearance of ghosts.

Renaissance and Later Tragedy

Roman works are significant not for their intrinsic grandeur but for their usefulness as models for such Renaissance dramas as Christopher Marlowe 's Tamburlaine (1587) and Thomas Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy (1594), often cited as the first revenge tragedy. These in turn served as models for the towering tragedies of the period, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (1588); Shakespeare 's Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear (1600–1607); and John Webster 's Duchess of Malfi (1614). The tradition of the tragic hero was to continue for the next 300 years, reinforced not only by English dramatists but by such European playwrights as the Spaniards Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca ; the Frenchmen Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine ; and the Germans G. E. Lessing , Goethe , and Schiller .

Moral, Domestic, and Political Tragedy

Tragedy can also be a vision of life, one shared by most Western cultures and having its roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. To reflect this wider sense of the human dilemma, where men feel compelled to confront evil, yet where evil prevails, a second dramatic tradition evolved. Its roots go back once again to religious drama, in this case the mystery and morality plays of medieval England, France, and Germany (see miracle play ; morality play ). Unlike classical drama, these plays, of which Everyman is the best known, emphasize the accountability of ordinary people. Even plays about the divine Christ stress human suffering and sacrifice.

The tragic lot of the common man and woman thus found its way into the dramatic repertory of later ages. George Lillo 's London Merchant (1731) is an early example of domestic tragedy, as Georg Büchner 's Danton's Death (1835) is of political tragedy. Henrik Ibsen 's Doll's House (1879) and An Enemy of the People (1882) are also superb examples of the domestic and the political tragedy, respectively.

Twentieth-Century Tragedy

The cataclysmic events of the 20th cent.—two world wars, the destructive use of atomic power, the disintegration of family and community life—have caused a radical diminution of the vision of life embodied by the earlier domestic and political tragedy. Its shrinkage is evident in such plays as Eugene O'Neill 's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and Long Day's Journey into Night (1956), Bertolt Brecht 's Mother Courage (1941), Arthur Miller 's Death of a Salesman (1949), and Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot (1953).

Each of the latter works can be labeled tragedy, if rather loosely. The pattern first seen by Aristotle is still discernible. The protagonist is, as always, defeated by opposing forces—Freudian behavior patterns, wartime attrition, loss of identity, drugs, or alcohol, if not pride, ambition, and jealousy. And still felt is the mysterious cathartic exaltation at the end of a powerful theatrical experience. Despite quibbling about the exact meaning and application of the word tragedy, most critics would agree in saying that some of the works of such 20th-century dramatists as Anton Chekhov , August Strindberg , Luigi Pirandello , Gabriele D'Annunzio , Ugo Betti , Michel de Ghelderode , Sean O'Casey , Jean Anouilh , and Tennessee Williams may be classed as tragedy.

Bibliography

See B. H. Clark, ed., European Theories of the Drama (rev. ed. 1947); R. B. Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy (1959); R. Williams, Modern Tragedy (1966); G. Brereton, Principles of Tragedy (1968); O. Mandel, A Definition of Tragedy (1982); C. Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy (1985); H. A. Mason, The Tragic Plane (1986); T. Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002).

Tragedy, play dealing in an elevated, poetic style with events which depict man as the victim of destiny yet superior to it, both in grandeur and in misery. The word is of Greek origin and means ‘goat-song’, possibly because a goat was originally given as a prize for a play at the Dionysia. The classic Athenian tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles developed from the choral lyric, an art which reached its height among the Dorian peoples of the Peloponnese during the 6th century BC. The earliest plays began with the parados, or entrance of the chorus, which was soon preceded by a prologos for the actor or actors. Each formal ode, or stasimon, for the chorus alternated with a dramatic scene, or episode; lyrical dialogue between an actor and the chorus was called a kommos; and all that followed the final stasimon was the exodus. The chorus sang, or chanted, in unison, but probably spoke through its leader. As nothing is known about the music and dancing of the chorus, and the music-rhythms of the odes cannot be translated into speech-rhythms, it is impossible to dogmatize about the original productions of the great texts which have come down to us, and all translations and revivals can only be approximations. It was the subject-matter of the plays which exercised the greatest influence on the drama of the future. Taken from the myths of gods and heroes, it retained a link with its religious origins by the beneficent intervention, usually at the end of the play, of a god—the deus ex machina—who descended from above the stage by means of a crane or pulley. The Roman theatre produced excellent writers of comedy in Plautus and Terence, but no tragedies for the stage have survived; those by Seneca, which had an immense influence on later European drama, were closet plays.

Tragedy in Renaissance Italy, more under the direct influence of the Greeks than of Seneca, developed early, but did not produce any outstanding playwright until the 18th century, with Alfieri. In France tragedy developed under the influence of Seneca, modified by the contemporary interpretation of Aristotle which gave rise to the theory of the unities of time, place, and action, though only the last was consistently observed by Greek dramatists, the unities of time and place being imposed on the play by the continuous presence of the chorus. The greatest exponents of French classical tragedy were Corneille and Racine, whose successors up to the end of the 18th century continued to employ their outward forms but without their inward excellence.

In England, where the influence of Seneca was paramount, Marlowe and Shakespeare evolved a form of tragedy mingled with comedy which was sui generis. Because of its powerful appeal to English audiences, the English theatre remained impervious to the influence of French classical tragedy, even after the Restoration, when such plays as Addison's Cato (1713) brought the letter but not the spirit of Corneille and Racine briefly on the English stage. Spain, too, had her native tragedy, formulated by Calderón, and efforts to import French tragedy failed, as did the attempts of Gottsched and Carolina Neuber in Germany. The German theatre later produced its own writers of tragedy in Goethe and Schiller; but it was the melodramatic aspect of their tragedies which had the greatest appeal, and this, added to the influence of Shakespeare all over Europe at the end of the 18th century, produced the highly coloured melodrama which in the 19th century replaced true tragedy everywhere. Meanwhile, in the 18th century, in the plays of Lillo, Lessing, and Mercier, efforts had been made to apply the formula of classical tragedy to middle-class existence, resulting in ‘domestic tragedy’ or tragédie bourgeoise. It was not a success. Tragedy in the narrow theatrical sense demands a cast of heroes or demi-gods, an unfamiliar background—exotic, romantic, or imaginary—and a sense of detachment heightened by the use of verse or rhetorical prose. Even the plays of Ibsen and his successors, though often tragic in their implications, are dramas rather than tragedies in the Greek sense. In modern times efforts have again been made to tame tragedy and bring it within the family circle. But it is interesting to note that Murder in the Cathedral (1935) by T. S. Eliot, which has as protagonists a king and an archbishop, was a success, unlike his The Family Reunion (1939) which, though based on a Greek myth, was firmly rooted in suburbia.

tragedy, a word applied, broadly, to dramatic (or, by extension, other) works in which events move to a fatal or disastrous conclusion. Aristotle's Poetics was the first attempt to define the characteristics of tragedy and its effect upon the spectator, and it profoundly influenced the neo-classic concept of tragedy in France and England. Shakespeare and other English dramatists of the Elizabethan period evolved new tragic conventions (see revenge tragedy), partly derived from Seneca, and the genre continued to flourish in the Jacobean period (see Webster, J.; Middleton, T.; Beaumont, F.; Fletcher, J.). A period of predominantly dull and frigid neo-classicism followed, and tragedy as a form, with odd exceptions, did not seriously revive until the 20th cent., when the works of Ibsen, Strindberg, O'Neil, A. Miller, T. Williams, and S. Beckett brought it a new seriousness, relevance, and urgency.

tragedy dramatic piece (†earlier, tale) having a disastrous ending XVI; calamitous event XVI. — (O)F. tragédie — L. tragœdia — Gr. tragōidíā, usu. taken to be f. trágos goat + ōidé ODE.
So tragedian tragic poet XIV; tragic actor XVI. — OF. tragediane, F. tragédien. tragic XVI. — F. tragique — L. tragicus — Gr. tragikós, f. trágos, but assoc. with tragōidíā. tragical XV. f. L. tragicus; see -AL1. tragicomedy XVI. — F. tragicomédie or It. tragicommedia — late L. tragicōmœdia, for tragicocōmœdia.

tragedy in classical and Renaissance drama, a serious verse play (originally a Greek lyric song), written in an elevated style, in which the protagonist (usually a political leader or royal personage) is drawn to disaster or death by an error or fatal flaw. Later, a drama of a similarly serious nature and unhappy ending but typically dealing with an ordinary person or people. Recorded from late Middle English, the word comes ultimately via Old French and Latin from Greek tragōidia, apparently from tragos ‘goat’ + ōidē ‘song’.

trag·e·dy / ˈtrajidē/ • n. (pl. -dies) 1. an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe: a tragedy that killed 95 people| his life had been plagued by tragedy. 2. a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, esp. one concerning the downfall of the main character. ∎  the dramatic genre represented by such plays: Greek tragedy. Compare with comedy.

tragedy Form of drama in which a noble hero (the protagonist) meets a fate inherent in the drama's action. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles is an early example, which was unmatched until the tragedies of Christopher Marlowe. Aristotle's Poetics systematized tragedy and introduced such ideas as anagnorisis (recognition) and catharsis (purging of pity). See also Aeschylus; Euripides; Greek drama; Shakespeare

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