SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

Outline:

• Introduction.
• Shakespearean tragedy — a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man.
• Voluntary actions.
• Non-voluntary actions.
• Shakespeare's tragic appeal.
• Conclusion.

“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

Jean Racine

The tragedy is an investigation of man's relation to the navies of the wicked in the world. It seeks ripostes to galactic snags, much as religion seeks them. It is a product of man's desire to believe it is a purposing and ordered universe. Shakespeare's tragic development is treated accordingly as a growth in moral vision. The central moral theme shapes various elements of tragedy: 

Ø action,

Ø character, and

Ø poetry

Thus, it presents a consistent and unified whole. In the end, we feel the cognitive function of tragedy. The value of the play depends not on the plot or character but upon the total impression as a unified dramatic symbol.

For the first time, we get the two sources of energy that overwhelm the plot in its course. There is a man on the one hand, and on the other hand, the spare-human authorities of the play. There is a moral conflict that engulfs the main character. But the dramatist is not more adept in the projection of man than profound in his apprehension of cosmic energy. Richard is the first great tragic figure. But Richard's universe is not universally bleak. The result is there is a flaw in the dramatic organism of the play. “Richard III” has proved a healthier play than “Richard II.” “Richard II" has botched to produce a wide and deep sense of its worth for mankind. Although its hero is a king, yet, he is a man without distinction. He is an ordinary person who can be encountered in familiar walks of life. Although his lot of theme has overwhelming power of evil unrestrained and unsuspected. It has a sense of universality. The grief is in the chief degree charged with anguish. Even with a performance that is no more than adequate, the final effect leaves only a cold unmoved.

“A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its the catharsis of such emotions.”

Aristotle

In "Macbeth", the place of sinful in the tragic cosmos drives itself once more into the front. Neither Romeo nor Brutus nor Hamlet nor Othello had been largely provoked towards his tragic slice, by plain impishness within himself. There was of each one of them. But Macbeth has sin in his own soul. His own evil brings about his own destiny. Evil is insensitive; sin is strangeness rather than unrighteousness. Shakespeare provides Macbeth with appropriate envisioning circumstances. He was living in an age that was a simpler epoch. 
For the full article Click Here