Name: ____________________
Date: _____________________
Tragedy: General Introduction
(1) In Greek the word “tragedy means “goat song,” but the connection between tragedy and goat
song is obscure.
What did the Greek Drama packet say about goats? What were they a symbol of?
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Perhaps a goat was the prize at some sort of early singing contest in Greece, or perhaps the dancers
wore goat skins. One medieval writer ingeniously suggested that tragedy is called goat song because
it begins prosperously, as a goat is abundantly hairy in front, and ends wretchedly, as a goat is bare
in the rear. Dante Alighieri, whose Divine Comedy proves him to be the greatest poet of the Middle
Ages, offered the engaging idea that tragedy is so called because its story is unpleasant and smelly
as a goat.
(2) The American public does not greatly approve of goat songs. We are an independent, optimistic
people and like to feel that we can do anything we please. Our movies, for example, specialize in
success stories with happy endings, and Hollywood has almost banished death from the screen. If
there is a death in a film, it is likely to be that of either a villain or a minor character. Deaths of villains
comfort us, and the death of a minor good character, such as the hero’s friend (a so-called
“secondary tragedy”), allows us to indulge in sentiment and yet come through smiling.
Do you agree with the statements in this paragraph? Why or why not?(This passage was probably
written in the 1950s or so! Do you think it still applies today?)
Ogden Nash has summarized the dominant American view:
To tragedy I have no addiction; What I always say is there’s enough trouble in real life without
reading about it in fiction. However, I don’t mind tears and smiles in a judicious blending, and I
enjoy a stormy beginning if it leads to a halcyon [mythology!] ending.
Most people would agree with Mr. Nash that tragedy depicts man’s troubles. But this is only half the
story, for tragic drama does not stop with troubles, but goes on to achieve some sort of affirmation,
and thus it is optimistic rather than (as commonly thought) pessimistic.
What?! Tragedy is OPTIMISTIC. Underline or highlight the reason for this above (“goes on to
achieve…”).
Catharsis: (make sure your teacher gives you this def. when you discuss this!)
(3) Death, we ought to note, is the most common of tragic endings, though some tragic dramas
conclude with spiritual rather than physical decay, and many do not end with any sort of death.
Aristotle did not focus on the ending, but said merely that tragedy was an imitation of a serious action.
For Shakespeare and the other Elizabethans, however, as for most of us, death is the most common
tragic outcome. The Elizabethan (and modern) concept was heavily influenced by the medieval idea
that tragedy described a reversal from good fortune to bad, but whereas the Middle Ages merely
demanded such a reversal, and did not bother to motivate the change but allowed Fate or Fortune to
bring it about, the Elizabethans sought to see something other than the workings of a fickle goddess,
and to this degree Elizabethan resembles Greek tragedy. In most of the tragedies of Greece and
Elizabethan England suffering and catastrophes are partly explained, but the explanations are not so
pat as to make trivial the pain or death which the heroes experience.
Let’s organize this information! Complete as much of the table below as possible:
Aristotle
Middle Ages
Greece, Elizabethan
England, and Modern
Definition
of tragedy
Fate or
Tragic
Flaw?
(4) The tragic hero generally passes from prosperity to woe, but this movement is not merely
downhill. The pain which he undergoes is often partly self-inflicted, for he willfully violates an existing
code. He insists on expressing himself, even though he must suffer for his self-assertion. Thus,
Aeschylus’ Prometheus [a tragedy based on a myth…just like the Greek Drama packet said!]
boldly admits that he defied Zeus’s commands, and O’Neill’s Abbie [American playwright and
character from one of his plays] glories in her violation of God’s edict. Most of the acts of selfassertion are the result of pride, or what the Greeks called hubris; the hero sets himself up as in some
way equal or superior to the cosmic powers, or at least he sees himself as an extraordinary man—
and he is. He often knows that he will have to suffer for his action, yet he chooses to express his mind
at the expense of his body, and even of his peace of mind. He is impious or irrational, but awesome
because he is “larger” than an ordinary man.
Reread the previous material (Paragraph 4). List the actions/qualities of a tragic hero:
The act which undoes the tragic hero, however, is, according to Aristotle, hamartia, or an error.
Whether Aristotle meant it was a moral flaw or simply an intellectual mistake—or both—is uncertain,
but great tragedies have been written with heroes of each sort. The important point is that calamity
proceeds from within: the hero is not arbitrarily struck down, but has in some way contributed to his
fall.
What does the text mean: moral flaw or intellectual mistake? What’s the difference?
“Misfortunes,” Oscar Wilde said, “one can endure—they come from outside, they are accidents. But
to suffer for one’s own faults—ah!—there is the sting of life.”
This is one of my favorite sayings: “But to suffer for one’s own faults—ah!—there is the sting of life.”
What does Oscar Wilde mean by this?
Nor need the action which produces calamity be a fault; indeed, the tragedy may result from the
hero’s very virtue—his overwhelming love or nobility of spirit. But for Aristotle, the heroic act is a flaw
because (as his treatise on ethics reveals) he believed that the good life generally consists not in one
or a few intense and heroic acts, but in the lifelong practice….
(5) Intentions may be good, but they may produce painful results, unforeseen yet logical. Cordelia,
King Lear’s loving daughter [Shakespeare!], summarizes one kind of tragic plight:
We are not the first/ Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.
When the tragic hero’s actions produce not the results he anticipated but contrary results (perhaps
suffering instead of joy), they are said to be ironic, and the irony is heightened if the audience and not
the character is first aware of the outcome.
What’s the term for irony that the audience is aware of before the characters themselves?
Thus, Oedipus searches diligently for a murderer and at last finds out what we already know….
Dramatic irony, it should be noted, is distinct from verbal irony, wherein the speaker is conscious that
his words mean the opposite of what they say on the surface. When an instructor says to a student
who is doing badly in a course, “You are in a fine spot,” the words mean the opposite of what they
say, and both instructor and student are conscious of the real significance of the words. The tragic
hero, however, often does not at first understand the implications of his own words or actions.
(6) When he asserts himself, the tragic hero is committed, sometimes unconsciously, to consequent
suffering. But when troubles come—and they usually come not as single spies but in battalions [from
Hamlet!]—he accepts them (never passively, and usually defiantly) and, indeed, may glory in his act
and in the suffering it brings. Or he may perceive the folly of his action. But whatever his attitude
toward the mistake or flaw (hamartia) or heroic action which precipitates his fall, the punishment or
suffering is so disproportionate that it usually destroys the hero’s body. The destruction of the body is,
however, often accompanied by such an enlargement of spirit that, no matter how awful the
consequences of the error, the hero has, we feel, in a way triumphed over them and subjugated them
by his greatness of mind. He reveals the full extent of his powers only under the most tremendous of
pressures, and these pressures are somewhat dwarfed by his expansion. This is man’s victory.
In what way can the tragic hero be called “triumphant” or victorious in a tragedy?
(7) All tragedies portray suffering, and critics have often sought to find in this suffering the special
pleasure which tragedy affords. Some theorists, notably Thomas Hobbes, famous for his suggestion
that man’s life is nasty, brutish, and short, have suggested that our pleasure is sadistic, that we enjoy
contemplating the suffering of our fellows, and that attendance at a tragedy is a dignified version of
watching a public execution. Lucretious, the Roman poet, took a somewhat milder view by asserting
that when we are safe on land we enjoy watching a disaster at sea, not because we delight in the
pains of others but because it is pleasant to perceive vividly the evils from which we are exempt. On
the other hand, some critics have claimed that we identify ourselves with the tragic sufferer and
derive pleasure from feeling ourselves mistreated. But although mankind includes masochists—
people who enjoy being made to suffer—masochism, like sadism, is too narrow to explain the
pleasure of tragedy. Similarly, the idea that tragedy excites sympathy, and sympathy is in itself a
pleasurable passion, is surely not sufficient to explain the appeal of tragic drama. If sympathy
afforded such pleasure, a hospital, as David Hume, the English philosopher, writes to Adam Smith,
“would be a more entertaining place than a Ball.”
(8) Literary criticism from Aristotle to the present is filled with attempts (all more or less unsuccessful)
to explain our interest in tragedy. Yet whatever the secret be, those who respond to tragedy see in it
not merely rich language or a well-organized story, but a meaningful picture of life, a picture which by
its truth to nature clarifies—if only darkly and for a moment—our view of man’s existence. There is, of
course, an opposite view. Stephen Gosson, An Elizabethan Puritan, himself a reformed playwright,
rejected tragedies as idle or evil entertainments. “The argument [plot] of tragedies,” he wrote, “is
wrath, cruelty, incest, injury, murder, either violent by sword, or voluntary by poison. The persons
[are] gods, goddesses, furies, fiends, kings, queens, and mighty men….The best play you can pick
out is but a mixture of good and evil; how can it then be the schoolmistress of life?” When all of
Gosson’s charges have been admitted, there remains the fact that so long as man is composed of
good and evil, and so long as the universe retains some of its enigmas, great tragedies will afford
men insight into mysteries otherwise unfathomed.
List some possible reasons to explain why we actually like to watch tragedies?