CHARACTERISTICS OF A SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
The chief characteristics of a Shakespearean tragedy
- Shakespeare's tragedies are based on stories and incidents taken from history or legends. Some of the stories are borrowed from previous playwrights. He has recreated these stories giving them a sense of unity and ordering them closely knit plots.
- The essence of a Shakespearean tragedy is that action issues from character and plot. Generally two groups of people and ideas are brought face to face leading to conflict. In a Shakespearean tragedy the plot is composed of several parts like Exposition, Conflict, Crisis, Denouement and Catastrophe. He did not observe the unities always.
- In a Shakespeare tragedy the suffering of the hero is exceptional. The hero is a man of high estate like Hamlet or King Lear. The hero identifies himself with a dominant passion from which he cannot deliver himself and which finally works out his destruction.
- Every tragic hero suffers from a 'tragic flaw' which leads him to the tragic end . In spite of the noble nature of the hero, this 'inherent weakness nor imperfection' destroys him. In King Richard III it is murderous ambition, in Hamlet it is his indecision, in Macbeth it is his black and deep desires nd in King Lear it is his uncontrollable wrath and so on.
- The essence of Shakespearean tragedy is conflict. The catastrophe rises out of the unresolved conflict. Shakespeare's greatest success was the portrayal of the soul-struggle or self-division of his leading characters. The conflict releases energy in the form of uncontrollable spiritual forces causing violent disturbance in the moral order of the world. Thus, Shakespearean tragedy, in its final analysis, is highly spiritual. As Dowden says, 'the theme of tragedy as conceived by Shakespeare is spiritual fulfilment or failure, a destiny higher than that which is related to this earthy life.'
- There is a kind of fatality and inevitability in Shakespearean tragedy. All calamities come from character and action. We feel the helplessness of man before the forces he releases. The tragic hero is striking at himself. The hero's character involves his fate. The catastrophe leaves behind what Bradley calls an 'impression of waste', a feeling that so much goodness is destroyed, so much human endeavor and suffering have come to nothing.
- Shakespearean tragedy is not pessimistic. It gives us an insight into the possibilities of the human soul. It is never depressing in spite of suffering, pain and death. Man is not small; though man perishes mankind triumphs.
- Shakespeare presents abnormal states of mind like insanity, hallucination and somnambulism (sleepwalking) in some of his tragedies like King Lear and Macbeth. Supernatural agents like ghosts as in Hamlet and witches as in Macbeth are introduced to intensify the tragic atmosphere. They do not beget action but prolong it and give confirmation to the inward movement of action.
- Shakespeare introduces accidents, chances and prophecies in his tragedies. The most well-known among these are the incidents of the handkerchief in Othello and the prophecy of the soothsayer / fortune-teller in Julius Caesar and of the witches in Macbeth.
- Shakespeare presents a moral world order in his tragedies. His concern was with the conflict between good and evil. This conflict causes a commotion in the moral world. Shakespeare's tragedies show the successful emergence of good out of his conflict though at a heavy cost. Much of the good is destroyed but it survives. Thus the tragedy is a presentation of 'morality in emergence'.
-As Dowden says it is true that good can survive only at the expense of so much of the virtuous force on the world; still it is well to be assured that evil, even at the expense of good can be subdues, such an assurance buoys us above despair.
- There is no poetic justice in Shakespeare. But evil characters do not prosper. Iago in Othello goes away with a stern warning. Shakespeare was concerned with the moral and spiritual order of the world and so his art refuses to recognize individual punishment or reward.
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