Aristotle to the present : The development of tragedy

Aristotle to the present : The development of tragedy

(a)        The Classical Age

In Greek tragedies the protagonist is always in front of the audience. He does not escape the over shadow of tragedy, which he at last confronts. The Elizabethan tragedy lacks the regular presence of the tragic hero. The chorus in Greek was presented for indicating the leitmotif of the play. Secondly, it gave the audience the atmosphere of dramatic development. It summed the events that passed away and those to come. Thirdly, it was used for comic relief and contrast, which Shakespeare broke in Elizabethans age. In Athenian tragedy, the horror scene was succeeded by exquisite song. The content of the Greek drama was monotheism but that of the modern drama is the mixture of crude polytheism with high moral conceptions. The older religious ideas survived in Greek dramas because these were strongly woven there. The  notion of the hero’s mistake in judgments prevailed there, which led to his inevitable downfall. In Greek tragedy man is seen alone with God, the power of fate hangs over the head, yet he generates a strength worthy to pit against even that mighty and inscrutable force. More of all Greek tragedy possesses special tragic form, which is deeply rooted in a precise structure of feelings.

To sum up with Greek tragedies, it contains common subject matter of legends, a few characters of high rank, dislike of evil scores or the stage, no mixing of comic and tragic elements, small plot. There the tragedy was performed on the esteem of Dionysus.

It was Aristotle who for the first time defined tragedy, on the basis of tragic dramas of the days. To him:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of 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. (Draper 41)

Aristotle is also of the opinion that to be an ideal tragedy, there should be six formative elements. They are spectacle, melody, thought, diction, character and plot. Two of them arise from the means, one from the manner and the rest three from the object imitated.

Aristotle gives more emphasis to plot than other components of tragedy. Plot is the arrangements of incidents and events. Plot is the soul and first principle of tragedy, as it is the representation of serious action that means only the important actions or events or incidents can be selected. These selected events are arranged in a tragedy in an order so that every part of the plot is well wrought and gives tragic emotions of pity and fear. To him, plot is complete and of certain magnitude having organic whole like the organs of living creature, which has beginning, middle and end. Different incidents and episodes, which are fragmental, are tied together in a concrete form with the combination of different units. Plot wields the chronological events in tragedy. There is orchestral symphony of the serious events in a tragedy. He talks about simple and complex plots. In simple plot the charge of fortune of the tragic hero takes place without the reversal of the situation and without recognition. In complex plot, the change is accompanied by the reversal of the situation and without recognition that arouse pity and fear to the audience and give exit to such emotions by purgating them.

Aristotle talks about three unities. He places more emphasis on unity of action then of time and place. He says that about the unity of time that only the single revolution of the sun is suitable for tragedy. Action keeps tragedy alive. When the tragic action occurs of friend against or between those who are near and dear to one another like Julius and Caesar, it is most tragic plot that excites pity and fear. If the action is of enemy against enemy or of neutral against neutral, it has nothing to do with pity and fear. Aristotle says that there can be no tragedy without plot but there can be without character.

            In Aristotle’s Poetics character possesses the second position. He aims four things at eight characters. The character must be good, appropriate, true to type and consistent or true to his action and nature. There shouldn’t be sudden changes in the nature of the character, and then only the character is appropriate for the tragic plot. The tragic hero is like ourselves having infirmities and virtues, tilted more to the side of good than of evil. He is neither a blameless character nor a notorious villain. Aristotle’s concept of the hero of high rank goes unquestioned in classical, Elizabethan and neo-classical tragedy. The hero must have some error of judgment (Hamartia) on his part, which causes him suffering. That is the main sources of the purgation of emotions in tragedy. Aristotle only on this regard defends tragedy as opposed to Plato’s blameless to the poets. Due to the lack of knowledge, the tragic hero commits series of errors, which bring him the crisis and his pitiful foul in the tragedy. When he discovers his won error, there is a sudden change in him from ignorance to knowledge. Thus, hamartia is the causes that make the tragic hero suffer severely and the audience feels pity and fear.

            The other component is diction, which is the expression of thought and bears the feelings and point of the dramatic personae. Action is the expression of thought. Melody, which provides pleasure to audience is also an element of tragedy and goes to the part of chorus. The spectacle is the craftsmanship of the stage, which also plays significant role for arousing pity and fear. The tragic effect is dependent on the performance also.

Aristotle realizes tragedy as a means of arousing pity and fear through tragic flaw and it purges them. This Aristotelian concept remained influential in the field of tragedy. Purgation is aroused by dramatic form in a serious univocal plot and action. F.L.Lucas may be right when he believes that Aristotle claimed this cathartic effect for tragedy as a defense against the charge of Plato.

(b)    The Renaissance Age

            Tragedy evolved through miracle and morality plays in medieval Age and they consisted of the religious tone. The classical concept of tragedy changed in Medieval Age. The narrative Patterns rather than the form was in vogue. There was little place for genuinely tragic action. The necessary relation between tragedies as an interpretation of experience as its embodiment in drama rather than in narrative can hardly be taken for granted. It is evident that in Chaucer’s view a tragedy need not be written in dramatic form. In his Prologue to the Monk’s Tale, he says:

Tragedy is to seyn a certeyn storie, As old bookes maken us memorie,

Of hym, that stood in great prosperitee, And is fallen out of heigh degree, Into myserie and endth wrecchedly. (Draper 69)

To Chaucer tragedy is narrative in form and contains a study of the rise and fall of the tragic hero. The downfall of the state of the tragic hero creates a narrative sequence from the story revealed to the audience.

The idea of tragedy as dramatic art or attitude to life came from the ancient to the modern world, or it may as more relevant to say from pagan Greece to Christian Europe along with the Renaissance. The tragedy developed both in its form and substance, which under went a gradual metamorphosis in Renaissance Age. The tragic substance in mystery and miracle plays was dominated by the religious content. Characters had to face tragic condition due to their weakness in religions faith. Briefly speaking, the main tragic substance in a character was the lack of religious faith in God and other heavenly duties. In Renaissance period, Shakespeare and his contemporary writers revived the tragic plot and substance. Shakespeare gave importance to the individuality of the characters. These heroes were noble persons like kings, queens, princes and state leaders. Tragedy stood as a powerful literary genre at its culmination point. It was Christopher Marlowe who broke the ice of Renaissance tragedy and Shakespeare sailed on it. Shakespeare dealt with tragedy in a new form and substance. He violated the early norms of tragedy. AC. Bradley says; “ Tragedy to Shakespeare is always concerned with persons “high degree”; often with kings or princes; if not, with leaders in the state like Coriolanus, Brutes, Antony; at least, as in Romeo and Juliet, with members of great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment” (4).

Elizabethan tragedy made free use of variety in theme and tone. There was mingling of the comic scenes with serious tragedy like in Hamlet and Macbeth, which was strictly prohibited in Athens. It violated the Athenian concept of three unities. It employed sub plots and under-plots besides the central theme and violated the ancient norms. There was influence of Renaissance in tragedy. Men went back to the classic for inspiration and example in the drama as in all other fields of literary enterprises, though it was the work of Latin not of the Greek play wrights. Murder and bloodshed scenes were presented on the stage and they helped to satisfy the audiences’ appetite for violence and horror. Seneca influenced Jacobean and Elizabethan playwrights. Thomas kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy was based on murder and quest for vengeance and included “ a ghost” insanity, suicide and ending with horror. The Gorboduc by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton reproduced the Senecan impact for the first time in English theatre. Besides these Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil and Hamlet of Shakespeare came under the influence of Seneca.

 (b)   The Renaissance Age

Revenge tragedy, a dramatic genre that flourished in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean period, is sometimes known as “The tragedy of blood”. Thomas kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta are also revenge tragedies. There are strong revenge motifs in Webster’s plays also. In revenge tragedy, the common components consist of the hero’s quest for revenge often at the prompting of ghost and of a hundred kinsmen or loved one. There are scenes of real and feigned insanity, play within a play, scenes of courage and mutilation etc. in a revenge tragedy. Theses all are inherited from Seneca. To W.H. Auden, There are two types of tragedy, the Greek and Christian. Greek is the tragedy of necessity; i.e. the feeling aroused in the spectator is “What a pity, it had to be this way”; Christian tragedy is the tragedy of possibility. What a pity it was this way when it might have been other wise”(Abel 40).

In the play of ‘necessity’ the hero has no choice, he is ‘fated’ as Oedipus, who is predestined to kill his father and marry his mother. But in contrast to this in the play of ‘possibility’ the hero has choices. He can be held the responsibility of his action. Shakespearean Hamlet is responsible for his own tragic end.

            The Greek felt that man was destined or fated but they refused to give in themselves to despair or to leave themselves at the mercy of destiny. The predestined fate cannot be discarded whatever hard the hero may attempt to undo it. The Renaissance hero isn’t fated and he has many choices and responsible for his own actions. Both Hamlet and Macbeth have options but Hamlet’s over thinking and Macbeth’s unthinking brought tragedy.

            Renaissance tragedy gives emphasis on the falls of famous man like Macbeth, Hamlet, Dr. Faustus etc., as a whole meaning. But with the collapse of the feudal world the practice of tragedy made new conventions .The legendry stories were changed and there came new subject matter of tragedy. Due to the advent of humanism, the individual became the center of tragedy not the God. Broadly speaking the idea of tragedy ceased to be metaphysical and became critical. The development of the common subject matters was not complete until the neo-classical critics of the seventeenth century.

            People displaced the hereditary feudal identities and employments as they attempted to enter new arenas and adopted new personal status. Renaissance tragedy gave man a center not God or Supernatural power unlike in ancient and medieval tragedies. With the Renaissance both humanism and the dignity of man got established in Europe. In Shakespearean tragedies, the theme is man’s position in the earth. Keeping other elements aside, the human element shines brightly in Elizabethan drama. Marlow’s Tamburlaine the Great deals with the thirst for power of a shepherd, and Dr. Faustus talks about a scholar’s thirst for knowledge, who moves inside the cobweb of Mephistopheles. Shakespeare’s Hamlet invites tragedy to himself being absorbed in his thinking. Even Ben Jonson in his Volpone deals with the human vanities, trickeries, wickedness and thirst for wealth. Another development followed in vogue of democracy, bringing the common man into the center of tragedy. In Renaissance tragedy, an individual man forms his own aspiration and nature set out on an action that led him to tragedy. It brought about the shift of emphasis from the tragic action to tragic hero.

Robert N. Watson in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama says: 

                        English Renaissance tragedy repeatedly portrays the struggle of a remarkable individual against implacable, impersonal forces, a struggle, no less impressive for its failure. The protagonist can be heroes even when they are not triumphant or highly virtuous, because the defeat of their aspirations (however, tainted with blasphemy or selfishness) reflects a frustration common to the human psyche and high-tone by the mixed message of Renaissance culture. (304)

In Renaissance, science and religion are actively changed as both nature and God became more accessible to the immediate experience of individuals. The over ambitious mind of Dr. Faustus confronts the obstacles of conventional Christian morality and the banal facts of the real world. Macbeth, the most subjective character confronts literal prophecy recorded cyclical nature. The desperate Renaissance struggle to reconcile the beautiful aspiration of mind with the severe demand of the body corresponds to the battle, which Nietzsche takes as the gist of tragedy-between Apollo (God of Wit) and Dionysus (God of Passion).

            Renaissance tragedies end in death. It may not mean that the playwrights mistook personal doom for the real meaning of tragedy. Death is brought between the tragic conflict generated by feelings individual and unfeeling larger orders. The consolation goes to the hero who reasserts his will or identity in front of death. There in Renaissance tragedy, decorum of language, five acts, and poetic justice were used and the three unities i.e. time, place and action were not given high priority.

(c)        The Modern Age

            Modern tragedy seeks to study a complete elaborate social reality. It deals with the socio-economic setting where a character is broken into different-isms such as socialism, capitalism, communism and so and forth. Tragedy is a changing social genre. It therefore, deals with the changing social convention adopted by man. Neither the Greek nor the Elizabethan tragic forms can suit for modern man. The religious faith out of which they grew in the past is no longer shared today. The ancient as well as Elizabethan belief is no longer available to us. Yet, the modern tragic hero like the tragic hero of the past still lives at the mercy of alien and unpredictable forces. The condition of the modern hero is ambiguous; he has no final explanation for the mystery of existence. Having lost his belief in heaven and hell, in the meaning or purpose of the cosmos itself, he sees no law of equivalence between the punishment imposed on him and his supposed guilt. The twentieth century man ceased to believe in the reality of the supernatural power to which man can turn for aid. For him there is no life after death. Christianity has been ineffectual in averting the fate of annihilation that threatens to overwhelm the mankind. Modern hero has lost his faith. To him life itself has become the burden of torture. He is facing loneliness and blind fate, which is his fundamental isolation. To Raymond Williams these isolation and loneliness are equal to death like in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

On the one hand man’s condition in this earth is full of pangs and sufferings. He is frustrated, despaired, isolated from life itself. On the other George Steiner declares the death of tragedy, to the ground that it has last the mythical framework. Modern science has changed the myth into reality. George Steiner in The Death of Tragedy says, “Tragedy is that form of art which requires the intolerable burden of God’s presence. It is now dead because his shadow no longer falls upon us as it fell on Agamemnon or Macbeth or Athalie”(353). He says that Renaissance playwrights violated the Athenian norms of tragedy. They avoided the three unities and mixed tragic elements with the comic. They delighted in clowns, the clever fool in comic interludes. Since 17^th century, the history of drama became inseparable to the critical theory. Dramatists became the critics and theoretician i.e. Dryden and Bernard Shaw. The license system of the Puritan’s is also the cause of the death of tragedy. Due to the industrial Revolution, and the French Revolution, the social fabric changed and there arose the bourgeois class in the society. In Greek and Elizabethan theaters the audiences were homogenous, but it doesn’t apply in modern time. After 17^th century the audience ceased to be an organic community. This liberalization of the audience led to a lowering of dramatic standards. Drama was regarded as a better means of entertainment in the 19^th century than in the 18^th century. The Romantic evasion of tragedy also played a vital role in the death of tragedy. Rousseau’s legacy in romanticism is the cause of romantic evasion as the individual is not as responsible for his tragic fall as his early upbringing or the corrupt society is. To Romanticists nature moulds more. If the society is good, there is no crime. But tragedy is the metaphysical concept not based on social origins of evils. Every individual is responsible for his sin in the tragedy whether he does it knowingly or unknowingly. It was Romantic playwright who made tragedy a lyric mode in the craze of self-heroism.

To Steiner, the decay of verse and the rise of the prose are also the causes to death of tragedy. Poetic forms perceive the truth. Greek tragedies were written in verse. They sprang from sacrificial ritual and were inseparable from the language used to heighten lyric mode. Later in France, the prose language was used in tragedy. Prose is the record and it anticipates the reality of practical life. It is the grab of mind doing its daily job of work. In 19^th and 20^th centuries, verse no longer stands at the centre of communicative discourse. The natural language of discourse, justification and recorded experience is now prose. Bernard Shaw believed that verse was not appropriate for modern ideology and modern experience. The existing philosophical system is also the cause of the death of tragedy. Harry T. Moore, in the preface to The Tragic Vision points out that Glicksberg is sometimes in opposition to George Steiner.

The new form of tragedy is not only possible in our time, It has been produced by such men as Faulkner, Malraux, O’ Neill, Sartre and Camus. There are writers who have accepted Nietzsche’s premise that God is dead, but have found ways to express the tragic vision, often in defiance of the meaningless to the absurd. (Glicksberg VI)

Arthur Schopenhauer sees life infinitely sad, but not worthless, and infinitely fragile. To him, life is a bad dream from which we have to wake up. This conviction becomes clearer to us than ever. Tragedy gives us the view of the world that negates life and can afford no pleasure. For him the credo of life is “Vanity of Vanities” (Lucas 67), and the tragedy is the main source to express it. Tragedy gives us an insight into the heart of mystery, into the nature of evil, that is the nature of reality and hence of will. He says that Christian religion teaches renunciation and surrender of the will. The ancient tragic heroes bear the inevitable blows of fate, while the modern on the contrary, show the surrender of the whole will to live, happy abandoning of the world because of its verities and worthlessness. The ultimate end to him is to summon and turn away the will from life.

To Hegel: “Tragedy is the collision of equally justified powers” (Draper 112). There is conflict between two goods, which bring tragedy like in the Antigone. In this play, Antigone’s brother launches a military operation against his country. The king, Creon kills him and disallows other to stay him. But Antigone is determined to bury her dead brother. Both of them are right and wrong on the one hand, Antigone avoids the decree of the king and the other Creon discards the ethics of religion. Finally Antigone breaks the decree of the king. The king is forced to kill her. After her death Haeman (Creon’s son) kills himself, who is a lover Antigone (daughter of Oedipus). The king bereaves of his son and invites his tragic end. In this way both Creon and Antigone are equally justified in their work.

To Nietzsche, tragedy means the product of a fruitful tension between diverse urges like Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollo is made to express Dionysian knowledge and Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo. Nietzsche’s Apollonian vision has a heroic world, sublime magnificent and rejoicing in its splendid individuality. It is combined with the wild self-negating rapture of the music of Dionysus. In this “Discordia concur” tragedy springs up and it also fades down when the heroic, and glorious Apolline world sinks into the ecstatic Dionysian world. Here individual loses himself whom Apollo forbids to know and gets enjoyment to be lost in the bottomless abyss of Dionysian sweep of life.

In the 20^th century Arthur Miller's “The Tragedy of the common man” became important. First of all he discards the high rank of the tragic hero. The culture and the social structure of modern time differ from the time of Sophocles and Aeschylus when they wrote tragedy. Not only the Athenian concept but also the Elizabethan Standard became out of date. That is why Miller says; "It is now many centuries since Aristotle lived. There is no more reason for falling down in a faint before Euclid’s Geometry, which has been amended numerous times by men with new insight, things do change, and even a genius is limited by his time and the nature of his society” (Draper 164-5).

If we judge modern tragic plays on the basis of what Aristotle has said about tragedy, none of them is tragedy. The classicist was of the opinion that tragedy is a highly serious play with a magnificent theme and highly ranked hero. Our age is the age of democracy. It is entirely different from the era of Aristotle. Ours is an era of common man whereas Aristotle’s was of the king and queen. Miller says that Aristotle denied common man to be the hero of the tragedy on the ground that Aristotle lived in the society where slavery system prevailed. According to Miller the tragic hero must have choices open to him, so that he can choose his course of action and the choices should be serious enough to change the course of his life. There should be intensity in tragedy. The hero’s tragic victory ends to be related to his consciousness. Society is a trap and whoever lives in society is automatically trapped –he becomes a victim. It is the environment that gives the way out to pity and fear in modern tragedy. If the issues put forward by a character in his course of action are serious enough to rise above their immediate context and encompass the condition of humanity at large, the character can be a valid tragic hero. Miller says that modern tragedy must be effective in creating self-generating values that would justify the victory on purely humanistic ground. In the past, death was meaningful. People used to believe in God. But in modern society there is no basic agreement between what is the right way to live or to die. “Both life and death have no meaning and these two must be heavily weighted with meaningless futility” (Draper 166).

In the Death of a Salesman WillyLoman is a man who from selling things has passed to selling himself and has become, in effect, a commodity which like other commodities will at a certain point be discarded by the laws of economy”, says Williams (104). He brings tragedy down on himself, not by opposing the life, but by enduring and living it. Miller says that the so-called tragic victory is related to the consciousness of the hero. This tragic victory is more effective in a society of faith than in secular society”. He says that tragic victory must come out of the essential humanity of the character not out to the transcendental values which faith purposes. He further says that complete consciousness is possible only in the play like Prometheus not in the play about human. In 19^th centuries a bourgeois or working class figure is felt to be worthy enough of the role of tragic Protagonist. It is said that even "the Elizabethans not excluding Shakespeare, of ten failed to maintain an appropriate dignity in both the manner and diction of their heroes” (Draper 18).

In modern Age, Ibsen, Miller, Strindberg, O’ Neil, Tennessee Williams, Tolstoy, Laurence, Chekhov, Beckett, Isonesco, Eliot, Camus, and Sartre (tragic writers) lack the Aristotelian canons. They avoided the ancient plot and insisted on the inner psyche of the hero. The trend of portraying the life of common man that had already begun is still retained and carried on their tragic heroes don’t have regal or majestic personalities of Hamlet, King Lear and Oedipus. They are all from the ordinary base of life. Arthur Miller is the pleader of the common tragic hero. 

Actually it is war that is the cause of everything. The hero in the modern tragedy i. e. in drama or novel is neither controlled by his destiny nor by his own actions, but by his being. His very existence and his being have been tragic. Nothing is certain only the death. As war has discarded all the traditional values. They could no longer be the saviours of human beings. Modern man is in search of his existence as the society is full of absurdities and tortures. According to Allain Robbe-Grillet, tragedy already exists in a society: “Tragedy may here be defined as an attempt to reclaim the distance that exists between man and things, and gives it a new kind of value, so that in effect it becomes an ordeal where victory consists in being vanquished” (Drabble 14).

Tragedy like other major art forms is an expression and reflection of man’s nature and vision of universe and his role or position in it. The concept of tragedy has changed greatly since Greek- Roman to modern time. The tone, form and substance of tragedy here been modified, we now have the grief, misery and disaster of an ordinary man. We have the characters like tramp, peasant, homemaker etc. not king, queen, prince, the state leader etc. The 19^th and 20^th century literary arena is covered by novel which is the product of low mimetic i.e. realistic, naturalistic. All attempts of human being in this world are like the attempts of Sisyphus of the ancient myth. That is why modern tragedy is beyond bloodshed, and high stature of the hero. The vision of the modern hero is tragic. As there is sheer impact of Nietzsche’s philosophy and Freudian Psychology. He is broken and has no faith in God. Tragedy then, is the consequence of man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justify or the individual attempting to gain his rightful position in his society.

To sum up with tragedy and its theme in Athenian concept tragedy was closely related to religious view. In Renaissance period tragedy was confined to individual quality of the hero. In addition, in naturalistic drama like of Ibsen’s Shaw’s and many others’ social realities played an influential role in formulating tragic ideas. At present the tragic idea comes from the gap what man thinks and what is the reality.