When is a play a tragedy

In classical tragedy, the protagonist is a tragic hero of a high social status whose own character flaw combines with fate to bring about their ruin. Regardless of the details, all tragedies attempt to examine serious questions of existence, especially the relationship between man and the universe.

The tragic form was first developed by the ancient Greeks as a dramatic art. Playwrights like Sophocles and Euripides wrote tragic dramas to accompany ritualized religious celebrations. These plays established the concepts of the tragic hero, the tragic flaw hamartia and the resulting catharsis. The entrances and exits of a masked chorus who provided commentary throughout the play served as the scene changes of later theater.

Greek tragic heroes typically begin a play at the height of their powers - happy, respected, successful, and of noble birth. Their own character failings, however, drive them to make a series of mistakes that leads to their downfall. This connection with the tragic protagonist has remained central to the genre despite its many variations over the centuries. After dying out as a preferred form of literature for a few centuries, tragedy experienced a revival during the 16th and 17th centuries in Elizabethan England and French Baroque theater.

English playwrights like Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare continued the Greek tradition of tragic heroes brought low by their own flaws, as in The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus , Othello , or Macbeth.

They introduced more ordinary protagonists, however, and enriched their tales with the addition of subplots.

Over the next few centuries, tragedy evolved along with the growth of the novel. English Tragedy : These tragedies are modeled after the Roman playwright Seneca. In these works, it can be noted that there is considerable violence and the occasional supernatural being. Unlike Greek tragedies, English ones revolve around realistic people and have many subplots as well as moments of comic relief.

Tragedies are an important genre of literature that allows an audience to experience a great release of emotions as the tragic events unfold in the story. Within these dramas, the negative qualities of life are highlighted, and oftentimes, the audience can learn from the mistakes made by the characters, which ultimately led them to their demise. Despite their feuding families, the two decide to secretly marry and attempt to be together.

Unfortunately, due to fate and their rash decision-making, they tragically commit suicide at the end of the play. Aristotle believed that a good tragedy was a productive, safe way to release those negative emotions.

Unfortunately, tragedies are extremely rare these days. Shakespeare was a huge fan of a good tragedy, and some of his best plays are his tragedies.

Macbeth, for example, tells the story of a noble Scottish warrior whose wife convinces him to betray and murder the King. In the end, he is destroyed by the very people he once fought side-by-side with. In the story, Okonkwo is a prosperous and well-loved man in his village. But he is guilty of hubris, and his rash actions accidentally cause the death of another man in the village.

After being accused of manslaughter, Okonkwo is abandoned by his friends and ultimately dies alone. Michael Collins , starring Liam Neeson, is a historical tragedy about a famous leader of the Irish War of Independence. The real-life Collins fought for independence from Britain, and then went to London to negotiate a peace treaty that split the island in two, with only the southern part gaining independence.

In the ensuing conflict over the treaty, Collins was killed by men who had once fought beside him. The film takes a pro-treaty stance, and so Collins is portrayed as a tragic hero with his death serving as the sad ending, and idealism as his tragic flaw.

American History X , starring Edward Norton, is a particularly tragic story because the tragic hero actually fixes his flaw before being killed. Over the course of the film, Danny and his brother significantly grow up and abandon their hatefulness. In Greek drama, tragedy and comedy were the two opposed genres.

Nearly every Greek play fell into one or the other of these categories, and the rules separating them were pretty clear. Whereas tragedies made people feel sad and let people release their negative emotions, comedies made people laugh so that they forgot their emotions at least for a little while.

Today, comedy has clearly won the popularity contest — Hollywood gives us dozens of comedies each year, but very rarely comes out with a genuine tragedy. A tragic hero can have all kinds of flaws. But the most common is hubris , a Greek term meaning an excess of confidence, ambition, or defiance toward the gods.

For example, Hitler is often depicted as being guilty of hubris among other flaws, of course. The thing that brought him down in the end was that he thought he was indestructible — he thought he could fight a war against the Allies and then, right in the middle of it, turn around and pull a surprise attack on the Soviets.

This turned out to be a fatal mistake, and Hitler lost the war because of it.