tragedy

1. 1. A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.
   2. The genre made up of such works.
   3. The art or theory of writing or producing these works.
2. A play, film, television program, or other narrative work that portrays or depicts calamitous events and has an unhappy but meaningful ending.
3. A disastrous event, especially one involving distressing loss or injury to life: an expedition that ended in tragedy, with all hands lost at sea.
4. A tragic aspect or element.

[Middle English tragedie, from Old French, from Latin tragoedia, from Greek tragōidiā : tragos, goat + aoidē, ōidē, song.]

noun

An occurrence inflicting widespread destruction and distress: calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, disaster. See help/harm/harmless.

Definition: disaster
Antonyms: advantage, blessing, boon, success, victory

tragedy, a serious play (or, by extension, a novel) representing the disastrous downfall of a central character, the protagonist. In some ancient Greek tragedies such as the Eumenides of Aeschylus, a happy ending was possible, provided that the subject was mythological and the treatment dignified, but the more usual conclusion, involving the protagonist's death, has become the defining feature in later uses of the term. From the works of the Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, the philosopher Aristotle arrived at the most influential definition of tragedy in his Poetics (4th century BCE): the imitation of an action that is serious and complete, achieving a catharsis (‘purification’) through incidents arousing pity and terror. Aristotle also observed that the protagonist is led into a fatal calamity by a hamartia (‘error’) which often takes the form of hubris (excessive pride leading to divine retribution or nemesis). The tragic effect usually depends on our awareness of admirable qualities—manifest or potential—in the protagonist, which are wasted terribly in the fated disaster. The most painfully tragic plays, like Shakespeare's King Lear, display a disproportion in scale between the protagonist's initial error and the overwhelming destruction with which it is punished. English tragedy of Shakespeare's time was not based directly on Greek examples, but drew instead upon the more rhetorical Roman precedent of Senecan tragedy (see also revenge tragedy). Shakespearean tragedy thus shows an ‘irregular’ construction in the variety of its scenes and characters, whereas classical French tragedy of the 17th century is modelled more closely on Aristotle's observations, notably in its observance of the unities of time, place, and action. Until the beginning of the 18th century, tragedies were written in verse, and usually dealt with the fortunes of royal families or other political leaders. Modern tragic drama, however, normally combines the socially inferior protagonist of domestic tragedy with the use of prose, as in the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller. Some novels, like Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947) can be described as tragedies, since they describe the downfall of a central character.

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tragedy (i.e. tragic drama), from Greek tragōidia, ‘goat song’. There is no satisfactory explanation of this name. It may have arisen because, it has been suggested, the chorus in tragedy originally wore goat-skins, or in connection with a goat-sacrifice, or even because there was a competition with a goat as prize.

The Monk in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales defines the essence of tragedy as he knew it, and as it is in most surviving Greek tragedies:

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bookes maken us memorie,
Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee,
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
And they ben versified communely,
Of six feet, which men clepen exametron.

(Tragedy is, as old books inform us, a kind of story concerning someone who has enjoyed great prosperity but has fallen from his high position into misfortune and ends in wretchedness. Tragedies are commonly written in verse with six feet, called hexameters.)

1. The origin of Greek tragedy. The only Greek tragedy we possess is Athenian; for that reason it is known as ‘Attic’ tragedy (from the state of Attica, of which Athens was the chief city). Tragedy was usually regarded as an Attic invention (but not always; see below). It is very difficult to trace its history back beyond the fifth century BC. There were several different accounts of its origin current in antiquity. Aristotle thought that it originated ‘in the improvisations of those who led the dithyramb’, but adds that it was said by some to have evolved from choral performances in the (Dorian) Peloponnese. Certainly choral song remained an important constituent of tragedy, and the dialect of the choruses, (literary) Doric, attests the origin of the choral element in a Doric-speaking region (see DIALECTS). Drama, however, requires actors. A tradition followed by Horace in the Ars poetica attributed the invention of the actor to Thespis, who came to Athens from Icaria in Attica and won the tragedy competition in 533 or a little earlier. Thus Attic tragedy may be thought to have originated no earlier than the mid-sixth century BC.

The tradition which gives tragedy a Peloponnesian origin claims that the decisive step towards drama was taken by Arion (possibly of the seventh century BC and also credited with the development of the dithyramb into a recognized literary form), who brought on stage ‘satyrs speaking verse’. Aristotle also says that tragedy acquired dignity by development from the style of satyr-plays (see SATYRIC DRAMA). Arion may provide a tenuous link between dithyramb, tragedy, and satyr-plays, but it is still not clear whether (and how) Attic dithyramb and tragedy evolved from the same background as satyr-plays, and to what extent the choral performances in the Peloponnese became dramatic; nothing as specific is said of Arion's supposed innovation as is said of the introduction of an actor by Thespis. The Greek word for actor, hypokritēs, probably means ‘answerer’ (rather than the possible meaning ‘interpreter’); the actor's answers to the questions of the chorus provided the occasion for their song, and their exchanges (by this account) brought drama into existence (see CHORUS).

By 472 (the date of the earliest surviving play, Aeschylus' Persians) tragedy had acquired the dignity and seriousness of which Aristotle spoke (see above), stemming from its concern with the human condition and the latter's relation to divine ordinance. It is impossible to know how much its development was shaped by Aeschylus, since we know so very little of his predecessors and contemporaries (see 4 below). The plot of a Greek tragedy is nearly always based on an episode from myth (for exceptions see PERSIANS, PHRYNICHUS, and AGATHON), and the influence of Homer is marked.

2. Performances of Greek tragedies. Performances of tragedies in Attica were part of religious celebrations and, until the Hellenistic age, appear to have been confined to the festivals of Dionysus. (For the close connection between the god and the performance of drama see DIONYSIA and DIONYSUS, THEATRE OF.) Thus plays were produced on only a few occasions during the year, and for a single performance on each occasion. The most important setting for new tragedies was the Great Dionysia in March, but tragedies were also produced at the Lenaea in January, and second productions might be staged at the Rural Dionysia. In the fifth century the only second productions at the Great Dionysia (with one exception; see below) were revised versions of plays which had been unsuccessful in their original form, such as Euripides' Hippolytus, but it may be that comedies were more often restaged than tragedies. The one notable exception was in the case of Aeschylus: after his death it was decreed that his plays might be produced at the Great Dionysia by anyone who wished. From 386 BC it was permitted to produce an earlier tragedy and from 339 an earlier comedy.

Tragedy was produced under the auspices of the state, supervised by magistrates. Drama at Athens was a matter for competition. Since dramatic competitions at the Dionysia were known to be in existence in the 530s (see 1 above) it is likely that they were instituted (and the festival itself first organized) by the tyrant Peisistratus and his sons. Three tragic poets were selected from all those applying and ‘granted a chorus’ by the archon, i.e. given permission to compete for the prize of best tragic poet. A main actor (‘protagonist’) was allocated to each poet by lot, from three chosen and paid for by the state. Apart from that the costs of production were borne by the choregoi. Each poet staged three tragedies (the trilogy) followed by a satyr-play, the set of four being known as the tetralogy. (These terms we owe to the Alexandrian scholars.) The contests were decided by judges, five in number, chosen by lot from lists of names selected by each tribe; no doubt the judges were influenced on occasion by the expressed views of the audience. The successful poet was rewarded with a crown of ivy; from the mid-fifth century the best actor among the protagonists also received a prize. Actors and chorus were all male, and only Athenian citizens were allowed to take part, although metics were admitted at the Lenaea at a later date.

Greek tragedy contained two elements, choral song in lyric metres, with musical accompaniment, and dramatic spoken exchanges between characters, which were mainly in iambic trimeters (Chaucer's ‘hexameters’; see METRE, GREEK 5). Some parts were a blend of the two. The importance of the chorus varied from play to play (in Aeschylus' Eumenides it might be considered corporately as one of the main characters); on the whole its role declined in significance towards the end of the fifth century. In general the chorus plays the part of spectators of the action, humble in rank, taking a limited part in but rarely initiating action, sympathizing with one or other of the chief characters, and commenting on or interpreting the dramatic situation. The choral songs were composed in a variety of lyric metres arranged in strophēs and antistrophēs, occasionally with epodes added (see TRIAD). The chorus comprised twelve performers in the plays of Aeschylus, increased to fifteen by Sophocles. It was drawn up in a rectangular form (in contrast with the circular chorus of the dithyramb) and its movements were based on this arrangement. It was accompanied by the flute. Very little is known about the dances performed by the chorus after the early fifth century when, we are told, Phrynichus and Aeschylus invented many dances. The term emmeleia (‘gracefulness’) was often used to denote the grave and dignified dance of tragedy. At the end of the fifth century BC the dance degenerated. Choruses continued to form a part of tragedies throughout the fifth and for part at least of the fourth century BC, after choruses in comedy had been discontinued; but it is not known precisely how long they survived.

To the single actor of Thespis' invention Aeschylus added a second and Sophocles a third, and three actors seem to have remained the norm. Originally the poet acted in his own plays; this is recorded of Thespis and Aeschylus, and of Sophocles in his earliest plays (not extant). From the time of Sophocles the relative importance of the actors was indicated by the names protagonist (‘first actor’), deuteragonist (‘second actor’), and tritagonist. To the first was assigned the longest and most difficult part, together with such other parts as could be combined with it. All the actors and the chorus wore masks (according to one tradition introduced by Thespis) appropriate to their parts; this feature was perhaps a relic of Dionysiac cult, for some parts of which the worshippers were masked. Only the flute-player was unmasked. No fifth-century masks have survived, but it is clear from vase-paintings that they covered the whole front half of the head including the ears and had wigs attached. They seem to have been made of linen stiffened with plaster and painted. The wearing of masks facilitated the doubling of parts by a single actor, or even the splitting of a single part between two actors. In Euripides' Bacchae, for example, Dionysus and the messenger were probably played by the same actor; in Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus the doubling and splitting of parts has become extremely complicated, with Theseus played by perhaps three actors, and Ismenē by a silent extra (kōphon prosōpon, ‘dumb mask’) unless, exceptionally, a fourth actor was allowed. Nonspeaking extras were used, and known, like their modern equivalents, as ‘spear-carriers’ (doryphorēmata). Aeschylus was said to have given the actors a more dignified costume; by the end of the fifth century they were wearing heavy, long-sleeved, ornamented robes reaching to the ground; Euripides was notorious for clothing his heroes in rags when the plot suggested it. Actors in classical times either went barefooted or wore tall laced boots (cothurni). Female characters were played by men.

3. Construction of Greek tragedy. A Greek tragedy normally contained the following parts.

(i) The prologue (prologos), the part preceding the entrance of the chorus, a monologue or dialogue which sets out the subject of the drama and the situation from which it starts. In the earliest tragedies the play begins with the entrance of the chorus, who set the scene without prologue.
(ii) The parodos, the song which the chorus sings as it enters. Once on stage, the chorus does not usually leave before the end of the play.
(iii) The episodes (epeisodia), scenes in which one or more actors take part, with the chorus. The word epeisodion probably meant originally the entrance of an actor to announce something to the chorus. The episodes might also contain lyrical passages, such as lamentations or incidental songs by the chorus, but they were divided from each other by the songs of the chorus known as stasima (see below).
(iv) Stasima, songs of the chorus ‘standing in one place’, i.e. in the orchestra, in contrast with the parodos which was sung during its entrance. In the earlier extant tragedies the stasima are usually connected, if only obliquely, with the events of or emotions aroused by the preceding episode. But this connection became more tenuous, until Agathon became reputedly the first to introduce choral lyrics which had nothing to do with the plot (and could fit any tragedy), called by Aristotle embolima, ‘interpolations’.
(v) The exodos or final scene, after the last stasimon.

For Aristotle's analysis of the nature of tragedy and its qualitative elements see POETICS.

4. Principal Greek tragedians. Before Aeschylus the principal tragic poets were Phrynichus, Pratinas, and Choerilus. None of their plays survives. Apart from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides the most famous was Agathon, and after him perhaps Ion of Chios and Critias. There were about a dozen others who won the fifth-century tragedy competitions from time to time. The descendants of Aeschylus and Sophocles included some able tragedians. A younger Euripides produced posthumous plays by the elder Euripides and was himself a dramatist. But inspiration was failing by the end of the fourth century, and although tragedy was still being written in the third century at Athens, Alexandria (on a grand scale), and elsewhere, we know nothing except the (otherwise unknown) names of some of the writers and about forty lines of their work; nothing more was thought worthy of preservation.

5. Roman tragedy. For the origins of Roman drama see COMEDY, ROMAN 1. A new impulse was given when in 240 BC Livius Andronicus first staged rough adaptations of a Greek tragedy and a Greek comedy, to be followed by other adaptations from Greek. Naevius, his contemporary, appears to have been the first to compose, besides tragedies on Greek subjects, fabulae praetextae, dramas whose themes were drawn from Roman history or legend. His successors Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius also wrote occasional praetextae as well as tragedies modelled on Greek originals. After them Roman tragedy declined, and there was no important tragedian in the later years of the republic. Under the emperor Augustus, Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies which have perished, as have also the Medea of Ovid and the Thyestes of Varius Rufus, both of them popular plays praised by Quintilian. To the age of the emperor Nero belong the highly rhetorical tragedies of Seneca the Younger; like most of his predecessors he borrowed his subjects from Greek sources, and it is improbable that his tragedies were intended for the stage. The ordinary metre of Roman tragedy was the iambic senarius (see METRE, LATIN 2); this was used in dialogue. The sung portions were in simple lyrical metres adapted from the Greek. The chorus, where there was one, appeared on the stage, not, as in Greek tragedy, in the orchestra, and could take a greater part in the action.

Horace in his Ars poetica gives critical advice on the writing of tragedy, perhaps because the Pisonēs to whom the poem is addressed were interested in the genre. But conditions at Rome were unfavourable to the development of tragedy. Performances were not, as at Athens, part of a religious festival with cultic associations and social significance. There was no homogeneous audience in sympathy with the poet's view of things, religious, national, ethical, and social. Greek themes did not greatly interest the Roman spectator, and tragedies on Roman themes were perhaps problematical for political reasons; they were certainly few. Tragedy at Rome was moral and didactic, inculcating energy and fortitude, valued for its displays of oratory, and occasionally as appealing to national or political sentiment. But it does not appear to have produced any great original conceptions or the subtlety and character-drawing of its Greek prototype, though Quintilian rated the lost Thyestes of Varius as equal to any Greek tragedy. Roman tragedy was further inhibited by the extinction of political life under the empire, which made it difficult for the playwright to choose a subject that was not liable to sinister interpretation by a suspicious emperor. See also THEATRE.

Tragedy flourished in France over a period of about 250 years, between 1550 and the Revolution, with a high point in the middle of the 17th c. It differs from other dramatic genres in having given rise to a great deal of theorizing, most of it related to Aristotle's Poetics as mediated through the scholars of the Renaissance [see Classicism].

French tragedy is characterized not so much by the emotional effects (pity, terror, catharsis) mentioned by Aristotle or the ideological schemes developed by modern criticism from Hegel onward, as by the notion of grandeur. It was, with epic, the most elevated literary genre. Until the 18th c. it presented only persons of high rank, usually given lustre by being drawn from the distant world of Greek, Roman, or biblical myth, legend, or history. It was almost always written in verse (for the most part, alexandrines), at least until the 18th c., when La Motte and others made unsuccessful attempts to launch prose tragedy [for the mould-breaking ‘tragédie bourgeoise’ of Diderot see Drame].

1. Before 1630

The early 16th-c. idea of tragedy was still close to that of Chaucer's ‘Monk's Tale’, insisting on the morality to be drawn from the fall of great men; it was only after 1570 that La Taille and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye outlined a theory of tragic drama inspired by Aristotle. Tragedy in French was preceded by the Latin works of Buchanan at Bordeaux, and by Lazare de Baïf's French translation of Sophocles' Electra (1537). The first original French tragedy was Bèze's Abraham sacrifiant (1550), but it was Jodelle's Senecan Cléopâtre captive (1552/3) which set the pattern for humanist tragedy with its very simple plot, extremely long speeches interspersed with passages of rapid dialogue (stichomythia), moralizing choruses, and rhetorical elaboration. Similar plays were written over the next 50 years, sometimes with more elaborate plots and greater psychological interest, by Grévin, La Taille, Montchrestien, and above all Garnier, whose plays possess considerable poetic power. His Les Juives represents a high point in Renaissance tragedy.

This type of tragedy has in recent years been increasingly appreciated on its own terms rather than as a preparation for later achievements. It was a literary rather than a theatrical phenomenon, remaining virtually unperformed outside the humanist colleges. On the other hand, in the later years of the 16th c. tragedies began to be performed in the provinces, and then at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris, which showed little attempt to conform to the new rules of tragedy. This ‘tragédie irrégulière’ is best exemplified in the many plays of Hardy. Such action-packed, free tragedies, together with the popular new genre of tragicomedy, came near to eclipsing regular tragedy altogether (significantly, in 1628 Schelandre rewrote his tragedy Tyr et Sidon as a tragicomedy, and Ogier defied learned criticism in his preface to this reworking).

2. 1630-1700

The 1630s saw a remarkable revival of tragedy. New works were produced during this decade by Mairet, Scudéry, Rotrou, Du Ryer, La Calprenède, Tristan, and above all Pierre Corneille. All of these respected, though with some freedom, the rules for the genre which had been outlined by Renaissance theorists, but were now reiterated by Mairet in his preface to Silvanire and more dogmatically by Chapelain. In the years that followed, writers such as La Ménardière, Sarasin (‘Discours sur la tragédie’, 1639), d' Aubignac, and eventually Boileau completed the theoretical code of French tragedy. The most famous rules concerned the unities of place, time, and action: a tragedy should take place in a single setting, within a period of time not exceeding 24 hours, and should confine itself to a single plot. There were other stipulations concerning language and form, e.g. that within each of the five acts all the scenes should be linked, and more general recommendations for the construction of well-made plays. But the cardinal precepts were those insisting on vraisemblance and bienséance. The former ensured that the actions of the stage characters would seem credible; this meant, above all, conforming to audience preconceptions—or prejudices—about human psychology and the limits of probability. Bienséance worked in a similar way: ‘la bienséance interne’ laid down that characters should act in accordance with their rank, situation, and nature (as understood by contemporary audiences); ‘la bienséance externe’, that they should observe a proper decorum. And finally, it was axiomatic to classical critics that tragedy should be morally improving.

It was these rules that were invoked by Chapelain in his critique of Corneille's Le Cid. Corneille, the dominant figure in French tragedy before 1660, was often at odds with scholars and purists over the unities and other matters; in his three 1660 Discours (on dramatic poetry, tragedy, and the three unities) he asserted his independence, arguing in particular that truth, even when improbable, was as good a basis for tragedy as vraisemblance. He also claimed that ‘admiration’ was as valid a tragic emotion as the Aristotelian pity and terror. His own tragedies, particularly those written before 1651, often seem remote from modern ideas of tragedy, with their optimistic images of heroic self-creation—or alternatively their pictures of such self-proclaimed monsters as Cléopâtre in Rodogune. In his later tragedies, on the other hand, confusion and failure are more in evidence, and the tragic outcome of Suréna is as irrevocable as anything in Racine.

It is, of course, the latter who is the great tragic playwright of the later 17th c., although one should also mention such figures as Thomas Corneille and Quinault; these both contributed to the revival of tragedy in 1656 after a brief eclipse, and managed at their best to produce moving and effective drama. In Racine's case, an apparently easy observation of classical precepts goes with a probing of the dark core of human nature that makes him, in plays such as Andromaque, Britannicus, and Phèdre, more obviously akin than Corneille to the great tragedians of Greece. Only in the early Alexandre le Grand and in the late and untypical religious tragedies, Esther and Athalie, do we find endings that could be called optimistic.

By the time of Racine tragicomedy had disappeared from the stage, and regular tragedy was in competition with the machine plays and their successor, the increasingly popular opera (often called tragédie lyrique), in which psychological drama is subordinate to spectacle, music, and dance. When Racine retired from the secular stage in 1677 there was no tragic author to fill the gap. Pradon, who had challenged Phèdre, continued to write tragedies, as did, with varying degrees of contemporary success—but no posthumous recognition— Campistron, La Grange-Chancel, Longepierre, and others.

3. After 1700

While Racine, and to a lesser extent Corneille, retained their classic status throughout most of the 18th c., they found few successors worthy of note. The tragedies of La Motte, Lemierre, and de Belloy enjoyed success in their time. Crébillon père won a great reputation with his horror-filled tragedies on the classical model, but his fame was soon eclipsed by that of Voltaire, who set out to become Racine's heir, and was seen as such by contemporaries, if not by posterity. He too conformed to classical rules, making some innovations (e.g. use of spectacular effects and exotic settings) and seeking both to move audiences and to win them over to progressive causes (e.g. Mahomet). For all their skilful construction, his plays too have been consigned to literary history.

Tragedy was challenged in the mid-18th c. by the drame. Even if this new genre had no great successes at the time, the future belonged to it [see Drama In France After 1789]. Tragedies continued to be written, from M.-J. Chénier's patriotic Charles IX (1789) to the workof Raynouard, Lemercier, and Casimir Delavigne, and the briefly successful Lucrèce of Ponsard (1843), but tragedy as a genre was dead. This did not mean, of course, the disappearance of the tragic element in literature, however the notoriously slippery word ‘tragic’ is defined. There is more that is truly tragic, as most people understand the word today, in the novels and plays of the 19th and 20th c. than in most plays called tragedies. To speak only of the theatre, one sees a powerful tragic element in certain Romantic dramas, notably Musset's Lorenzaccio, in Becque's Les Corbeaux, or in some of Claudel's Symbolist works (e.g. Partage de midi). In more recent times, Giraudoux and Anouilh, among others, have reworked such tragic subjects as Electra and Antigone, though with a twist, while Sartre and Camus at times convey an apparently tragic vision of the world in their plays. And the playwrights associated with the Theatre of the Absurd, above all Beckett, offer haunting images (at once comic and tragic) of a humanity deprived of the old comforts of belief.

[Peter France]

Bibliography

• J. Scherer, La Dramaturgie classique (1950)
• J. Truchet, La Tragédie classique en France (1973)
• C. J. Gossip, An Introduction to French Classical Tragedy (1981)
• G. Jondorf, French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word (1990)

The genre of drama in which the principal action is an unfolding catastrophe. According to Aristotle the audience then feels pity and fear, and this has a cathartic effect with value of its own. In his essay ‘On Tragedy’, David Hume pondered the fact that were the events of a tragedy to unfold in real life they would be most unpleasant to us, yet we derive pleasure from their dramatic representation. His solution is not that we do not ‘really’ feel the pity and terror, thinking that after all it is only a fiction, but that we do, yet at the same time admire the form of the presentation, and this admiration accounts for our pleasure.

A serious drama in which a central character, the protagonist — usually an important, heroic person — meets with disaster either through some personal fault or through unavoidable circumstances. In most cases, the protagonist's downfall conveys a sense of human dignity in the face of great conflict. Tragedy originated in ancient Greece in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In modern times, it achieved excellence with William Shakespeare in such works as Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. Twentieth-century tragedies include Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, and Murder in the Cathedral, by T. S. Eliot.

A medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great person; a drama, usually in verse, portraying a conflict between a strong-willed protagonist and a superior force such as destiny, culminating in death or disaster.

Quotes:

"It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout -- not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now." - Jean Anouilh

"The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions." - Aristotle

"Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life." - Antonin Artaud

"Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy." - Jacques Barzun

"I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them." - Juliette Binoche

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon--instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today." - Dale Carnegie

See more famous quotes about Tragedies

"Tragedian" redirects here. For other uses, see Tragedian (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Tragedy (disambiguation).

Sarah Siddons as Euphrasia in a 1782 production of Murphy's tragedy The Grecian Daughter.

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Tragedy (Middle English tragedie < Middle French tragedie < Latin tragoedia < Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia, "goat-song"^[1]) is a form of art based on human suffering that, paradoxically, offers its audience pleasure.^[2] While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization.^[3] That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.^[4] From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, or Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, or Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change.^[5] A long line of philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon and criticised the tragic form.^[6] In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general, where the tragic divides against epic and lyric, or at the scale of the drama, where tragedy is opposed to comedy. In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic and epic theatre.^[7]

Contents 1 Origin of tragedy 2 Performance of Greek tragedies 3 Roman tragedy 4 Renaissance tragedy 4.1 Influence of Greek and Roman tragedy 4.2 France 4.3 England 4.4 Opera as tragedy 5 Neo-classical tragedy 6 Bourgeois tragedy 7 Modern development of tragedy 8 Theories of tragedy 8.1 Aristotle 8.2 Renaissance dramatic theory 8.3 Hegel 8.4 Nietzsche 9 Similar dramatic forms in world theatre 9.1 Ancient Indian drama 10 See also 11 Notes 12 Sources

Origin of tragedy

The word "tragedy" appears to have been used to describe different phenomona at different times. It derives from tragōidiā (Classical Greek τραγῳδία), contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song", which comes from tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to sing". Scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animal's ritual sacrifice.^[8]

Writing in 335 BCE (long after the Golden Age of 5th-century Athenian tragedy), Aristotle provides the earliest-surviving explanation for the origin of the dramatic art-form in his Poetics, in which he argues that tragedy developed from the improvisations of the leader of choral dithyrambs (hymns sung and danced in praise of Dionysos, the god of wine and fertility):^[8]

At any rate it originated in improvisation—both tragedy itself and comedy. The one tragedy came from the prelude to the dithyramb and the other comedy from the prelude to the phallic songs which still survive as institutions in many cities. Tragedy then gradually evolved as men developed each element that came to light and after going through many changes, it stopped when it had found its own natural form (IV, 1449a).^[9]

There is some dissent to the dithyrambic origins of tragedy mostly based in the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested. Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872).

Performance of Greek tragedies

Mask of Dionysus. Greek, Myrina, 2nd century BCE.

Greek literature boasts three great writers of tragedy whose works are extant: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The largest festival for Greek tragedy was the Dionysia held for five days in March, for which competition prominent tragedians usually submitted three tragedies and one satyr play each.

Greek tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentation took the form of a contest among three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days. Each playwright would prepare a trilogy of tragedies, plus an unrelated concluding comic piece called a satyr play. Often, the three plays featured linked stories, but later writers like Euripides may have presented three unrelated plays. Only one complete trilogy has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the open air, on the side of a hill, and performances of a trilogy and satyr play probably lasted most of the day. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, but evidence is scanty. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people.^[10]

All of the choral parts were sung (to flute accompaniment) and some of the actors' answers to the chorus were sung as well. The play as a whole was composed in various verse meters. All actors were male and wore masks. A Greek chorus danced as well as sang, though no one knows exactly what sorts of steps the chorus performed as it sang. Choral songs in tragedy are often divided into three sections: strophe ("turning, circling"), antistrophe ("counter-turning, counter-circling") and epode ("after-song").

Many ancient Greek tragedians employed the ekkyklêma as a theatrical device, which was a cart hidden behind the scenery which could be rolled out to display the aftermath of some event which had happened out of sight of the audience. This event was frequently a brutal murder of some sort, an act of violence which could not be effectively portrayed visually, but an action of which the other characters must see the effects in order for it to have meaning and emotional resonance. Another reason that the violence happened off stage was that the theatre was considered a holy place, so to kill someone on stage is to kill them in the real world. A prime example of the use of the ekkyklêma is after the murder of Agamemnon in the first play of Aeschylus' Oresteia, when the king's butchered body is wheeled out in a grand display for all to see. Variations on the ekkyklêma are used in tragedies and other forms to this day, as writers still find it a useful and often powerful device for showing the consequences of extreme human actions. Another such device was a crane, the mechane, which served to hoist a god or goddess on stage when they were supposed to arrive flying. This device gave origin to the phrase "deus ex machina" ("god out of a machine"), that is, the surprise intervention of an unforeseen external factor that changes the outcome of an event. Greek tragedies also sometimes included a chorus composed of singers to advance and fill in detail of the plot

Roman tragedy

v • d • e Roman and Byzantine theatre Architecture • Plautus • Terence • Seneca

Following the expansion of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) into several Greek territories between 270-240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek tragedy.^[11] From the later years of the republic and by means of the Roman Empire (27 BCE-476 CE), theatre spread west across Europe, around the Mediterranean and reached England.^[12] While Greek tragedy continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BCE marks the beginning of regular Roman drama.^[13] Livius Andronicus began to write Roman tragedies, thus creating some of the first important works of Roman literature.^[14] Five years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write tragedies (though he was more appreciated for his comedies).^[14] No early Roman tragedy survives, though it was highly-regarded in its day; historians know of three other early tragic playwrights—Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius.^[15]

From the time of the empire, the tragedies of two playwrights survive—one is an unknown author, while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca.^[16] Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are fabula crepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his Phaedra, for example, was based on Euripides' Hippolytus.^[17] Historians do not know who wrote the only extant example of the fabula praetexta (tragedies based on Roman subjects), Octavia, but in former times it was mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a character in the tragedy.^[16]

Seneca's tragedies rework those of all three of the Athenian tragic playwrights whose work has survived. Probably meant to be recited at elite gatherings, they differ from the Greek versions in their long declamatory, narrative accounts of action, their obtrusive moralizing, and their bombastic rhetoric. They dwell on detailed accounts of horrible deeds and contain long reflective soliloquies. Though the gods rarely appear in these plays, ghosts and witches abound. Senecan tragedies explore ideas of revenge, the occult, the supernatural, suicide, blood and gore. The Renaissance scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), who knew both Latin and Greek, preferred Seneca to Euripides.

Renaissance tragedy

Further information: Renaissance tragedy

Influence of Greek and Roman tragedy

The classical Greek and Roman tragedy was largely forgotten in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the beginning of 16th century, and theatre in this period was dominated by mystery plays, morality plays, farces and miracle plays. As early as 1503 however, original language versions of Sophocles, Seneca, Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence and Plautus were all available in Europe and the next forty years would see humanists and poets translating and adapting their tragedies. In the 1540s, the European university setting (and especially, from 1553 on, the Jesuit colleges) became host to a Neo-Latin theatre (in Latin) written by scholars. The influence of Seneca was particularly strong in its humanist tragedy. His plays—with their ghosts, lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory—brought a concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action to many humanist tragedies.

France

See also: French Renaissance literature

In France, after an initial period of emulation of highly rhetorical humanist tragedy in the late 16th century, the early years of the 17th century saw the creation of a baroque theatre of action and tragedy (murders, rapes), before slowly adapting to the precepts of "classicism" (the "three unities", decorum). French writers of tragedy from the late 16th century and early 17th century include: Robert Garnier, Antoine de Montchrestien, Alexandre Hardy, Théophile de Viau, François le Métel de Boisrobert, Jean Mairet, Tristan L'Hermite, Jean Rotrou.

The most important sources for French tragic theatre in the Renaissance were the example of Seneca and the precepts of Horace and Aristotle (and contemporary commentaries by Julius Caesar Scaliger and Lodovico Castelvetro), although plots were taken from classical authors such as Plutarch, Suetonius, etc., from the Bible, from contemporary events and from short story collections (Italian, French and Spanish). The Greek tragic authors (Sophocles and Euripides) would become increasingly important as models by the middle of the 17th century. Important models were also supplied by the Spanish Golden Age playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega, many of whose works were translated and adapted for the French stage.

England

See also: English Renaissance theatre, Shakespearean tragedy, Revenge play, and Domestic tragedy

In the English language, the most famous and most successful tragedies are those of William Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries. Shakespeare's tragedies include:

• Antony and Cleopatra
• Coriolanus
• Hamlet
• Julius Caesar
• King Lear
• Macbeth
• Othello
• Romeo and Juliet
• Timon of Athens
• Titus Andronicus

A contemporary of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, also wrote examples of tragedy in English, notably:

• The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
• Tamburlaine

John Webster (1580?-1635?), also wrote famous plays of the genre:

• The Duchess of Malfi
• The White Devil

Opera as tragedy

Contemporary with Shakespeare, an entirely different approach to facilitating the rebirth of tragedy was taken in Italy. Jacopo Peri, in the preface to his Euridice refers to "the ancient Greeks and Romans (who in the opinion of many sang their staged tragedies throughout in representing them on stage)."^[18] In creating the new artistic genre of opera, he and his contemporaries were striving to recreate ancient tragedy. Some later operatic composers have also shared this aim. Richard Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk ("integrated work of art"), for example, was intended as a return to the ideal of Greek tragedy in which all the arts were blended in service of the drama.^[19] Nietzsche, in his The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was to support Wagner in his claims to be a successor of the ancient dramatists.

Neo-classical tragedy

For much of the 17th century, Pierre Corneille, who made his mark on the world of tragedy with plays like Medée (1635) and Le Cid (1636), was the most successful writer of French tragedies. Corneille's tragedies were strangely un-tragic (his first version of Le Cid was even listed as a tragicomedy), for they had happy endings. In his theoretical works on theater, Corneille redefined both comedy and tragedy around the following suppositions:

• The stage—in both comedy and tragedy—should feature noble characters (this would eliminate many low-characters, typical of the farce, from Corneille's comedies). Noble characters should not be depicted as vile (reprehensible actions are generally due to non-noble characters in Corneille's plays).
• Tragedy deals with affairs of the state (wars, dynastic marriages); comedy deals with love. For a work to be tragic, it need not have a tragic ending.
• Although Aristotle says that catharsis (purgation of emotion) should be the goal of tragedy, this is only an ideal. In conformity with the moral codes of the period, plays should not show evil being rewarded or nobility being degraded.

Corneille continued to write plays through 1674 (mainly tragedies, but also something he called "heroic comedies") and many continued to be successes, although the "irregularities" of his theatrical methods were increasingly criticized (notably by François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac) and the success of Jean Racine from the late 1660s signaled the end of his preeminence.

Jean Racine's tragedies—inspired by Greek myths, Euripides, Sophocles and Seneca—condensed their plot into a tight set of passionate and duty-bound conflicts between a small group of noble characters, and concentrated on these characters' double-binds and the geometry of their unfulfilled desires and hatreds. Racine's poetic skill was in the representation of pathos and amorous passion (like Phèdre's love for her stepson) and his impact was such that emotional crisis would be the dominant mode of tragedy to the end of the century. Racine's two late plays ("Esther" and "Athalie") opened new doors to biblical subject matter and to the use of theater in the education of young women. Racine also faced criticism for his irregularities: when his play, Bérénice, was criticised for not containing any deaths, Racine disputed the conventional view of tragedy.

For more on French tragedy of the 16th and 17th centuries, see French Renaissance literature and French literature of the 17th century.

Bourgeois tragedy

Further information: Bourgeois tragedy and Augustan drama

Bourgeois tragedy (German: Bürgerliches Trauerspiel) is a form that developed in 18th-century Europe. It was a fruit of the Enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It is characterized by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens. The first true bourgeois tragedy was an English play, George Lillo's The London Merchant; or, the History of George Barnwell, which was first performed in 1731. Usually, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Miss Sara Sampson, which was first produced in 1755, is said to be the earliest Bürgerliches Trauerspiel in Germany.

Modern development of tragedy

In modernist literature, the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status. Arthur Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) argues that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings.^[20] British playwright Howard Barker has argued strenuously for the rebirth of tragedy in the contemporary theatre, most notably in his volume Arguments for a Theatre. "You emerge from tragedy equipped against lies. After the musical, you're anybody's fool," he insists.^[21]

Theories of tragedy

Aristotle

Further information: Poetics (Aristotle)

The philosopher Aristotle said in his work Poetics that tragedy is characterized by seriousness and dignity and involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (Peripeteia). Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the Eumenides, but he says that the change from good to bad as in Oedipus Rex is preferable because this effects pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in a catharsis (emotional cleansing) or healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama.

According to Aristotle, "the structure of the best tragedy should be not simple but complex and one that represents incidents arousing fear and pity--for that is peculiar to this form of art."^[22] This reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero's hamartia, which is often mistranslated as a character flaw, but is more correctly translated as a mistake (since the original Greek etymology traces back to hamartanein, a sporting term that refers to an archer or spear-thrower missing his target).^[23] According to Aristotle, "The change to bad fortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or flaw, but a mistake of some kind."^[24] The reversal is the inevitable but unforeseen result of some action taken by the hero. It is also a misconception that this reversal can be brought about by a higher power (e.g. the law, the gods, fate, or society), but if a character’s downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as a misadventure and not a tragedy.^[25]

In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis--"knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout") about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate."

In Poetics, Aristotle gave the following definition in ancient Greek of the word "tragedy" (τραγωδία):

Ἐστὶν οὖν τραγωδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας, μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ, χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδὼν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι'ἀπαγγελίας, δι' ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν.

which means Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.

Common usage of tragedy refers to any story with a sad ending, whereas to be an Aristotelian tragedy the story must fit the set of requirements as laid out by Poetics. By this definition social drama cannot be tragic because the hero in it is a victim of circumstance and incidents which depend upon the society in which he lives and not upon the inner compulsions — psychological or religious — which determine his progress towards self-knowledge and death.^[26] Exactly what constitutes a "tragedy", however, is a frequently debated matter.

Renaissance dramatic theory

Along with their work as translators and adaptors of plays, the humanists also investigated classical theories of dramatic structure, plot, and characterization. Horace was translated in the 1540s, but had been available throughout the Middle Ages. A complete version of Aristotle's Poetics appeared later (first in 1570 in an Italian version), but his ideas had circulated (in an extremely truncated form) as early as the 13th century in Hermann the German's Latin translation of Averroes' Arabic gloss, and other translations of the Poetics had appeared in the first half of the 16th century; also of importance were the commentaries on Aristotle's poetics by Julius Caesar Scaliger which appeared in the 1560s. The 4th century grammarians Diomedes and Aelius Donatus were also a source of classical theory. The 16th century Italians played a central role in the publishing and interpretation of classical dramatic theory, and their works had a major effect on continental theater. Lodovico Castelvetro's Aristotle-based Art of Poetry (1570) was one of the first enunciations of the "three unities". Italian theater (like the tragedy of Gian Giorgio Trissino) and debates on decorum (like those provoked by Sperone Speroni's play Canace and Giovanni Battista Giraldi's play Orbecche) would also influence the continental tradition.

Humanist writers recommended that tragedy should be in five acts and have three main characters of noble rank; the play should begin in the middle of the action (in medias res), use noble language and not show scenes of horror on the stage. Some writers attempted to link the medieval tradition of morality plays and farces to classical theater, but others rejected this claim and elevated classical tragedy and comedy to a higher dignity. Of greater difficulty for the theorists was the incorporation of Aristotle's notion of "catharsis" or the purgation of emotions with Renaissance theater, which remained profoundly attached to both pleasing the audience and to the rhetorical aim of showing moral examples (exemplum).

The precepts of the "three unities" and theatrical decorum would eventually come to dominate French and Italian tragedy in the 17th century, while English Renaissance tragedy would follow a path far less behoving to classical theory and more open to dramatic action and the portrayal of tragic events on stage.

Hegel

G.W.F. Hegel, the German philosopher most famous for his dialectical approach to epistemology and history, also applied such a methodology to his theory of tragedy. In his essay "Hegel's Theory of Tragedy," A.C. Bradley first introduced the English-speaking world to Hegel's theory, which Bradley called the "tragic collision", and contrasted against the Aristotelian notions of the "tragic hero" and his or her "hamartia" in subsequent analyses of the Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy and of Sophocles' Antigone. (Bradley, 114-156). Hegel himself, however, in his seminal "The Phenomenology of Spirit" argues for a more complicated theory of tragedy, with two complementary branches which, though driven by a single dialectical principle, differentiate Greek tragedy from that which follows Shakespeare. His later lectures formulate such a theory of tragedy as a conflict of ethical forces, represented by characters, in ancient Greek tragedy, but in Shakespearean tragedy the conflict is rendered as one of subject and object, of individual personality which must manifest self-destructive passions because only such passions are strong enough to defend the individual from a hostile and capricious external world:

"The heroes of ancient classical tragedy encounter situations in which, if they firmly decide in favor of the one ethical pathos that alone suits their finished character, they must necessarily come into conflict with the equally [gleichberechtigt] justified ethical power that confronts them. Modern characters, on the other hand, stand in a wealth of more accidental circumstances, within which one could act this way or that, so that the conflict which is, though occasioned by external preconditions, still essentially grounded in the character. The new individuals, in their passions, obey their own nature...simply because they are what they are. Greek heroes also act in accordance with individuality, but in ancient tragedy such individuality is necessarily... a self-contained ethical pathos...In modern tragedy, however, the character in its peculiarity decides in accordance with subjective desires...such that congruity of character with outward ethical aim no longer constitutes an essential basis of tragic beauty..." (Hegel, ed. Glockner, vol XIV pp567–8).

Hegel's comments on a particular play may better elucidate his theory: "Viewed externally, Hamlet's death may be seen to have been brought about accidentally ...but in Hamlet's soul, we understand that death has lurked from the beginning: the sandbank of finitude cannot suffice his sorrow and tenderness, such grief and nausea at all conditions of life...we feel he is a man whom inner disgust has almost consumed well before death comes upon him from outside."(Hegel, ed. Glockner,XIV,p572)

Nietzsche

See also: Apollonian and Dionysian

Nietzsche, another German philosopher, dedicated his famous early book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), to a discussion of the origins of Greek tragedy. He traced the evolution of tragedy from early rituals, through the joining of Apollonian and Dionysian forces, until its early "death" in the hands of Socrates. In opposition to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche viewed tragedy as the art form of sensual acceptance of the terrors of reality and rejoicing in these terrors in love of fate (amor fati), and therefore as the antithesis to the Socratic Method, or the belief in the power of reason to unveil any and all of the mysteries of existence. Ironically, Socrates was fond of quoting from tragedies.

Nietzsche in "What I Owe to the Ancients" in his Twilight of the Idols wrote: "The psychology of the orgiastic as an overflowing feeling of life and strength, where even pain still has the effect of a stimulus, gave me the key to the concept of tragic feeling, which had been misunderstood both by Aristotle and even more by modern pessimists. Tragedy is so far from being a proof of the pessimism (in Schopenhauer's sense) of the Greeks that it may, on the contrary, be considered a decisive rebuttal and counterexample. Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and most painful episodes, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustible vitality even as it witnesses the destruction of its greatest heroes — that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I guessed to be the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge — which is how Aristotle understood tragedy — but in order to celebrate oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity — that tragic joy included even joy in destruction"

Similar dramatic forms in world theatre

Ancient Indian drama

The writer Bharata Muni, in his work on dramatic theory A Treatise on Theatre (Sanskrit: Nātyaśāstra, नाट्य शास्त्र, c. 200 BCE - 200 CE),^[27] identified several rasas (such as pity, anger, disgust and terror) in the emotional responses of audiences for the Sanskrit drama of ancient India. The text also suggests the notion of musical modes or jatis which are the origin of the notion of the modern melodic structures known as ragas. Their role in invoking emotions are emphasized; thus compositions emphasizing the notes gandhara or rishabha are said to provoke "sadness" or "pathos" (karuna rasa) whereas rishabha evokes heroism (vira rasa). Jatis are elaborated in greater detail in the text Dattilam, composed around the same time as the Treatise.

The celebrated ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata, can also be related to tragedy in some ways. According to Hermann Oldenberg, the original epic once carried an immense "tragic force".^[28] It was common in Sanskrit drama to adapt episodes from the Mahabharata into dramatic form.

While early Sanskrit drama often had unhappy endings, as was the case with Bhāsa's plays, later Indian drama tended to stick to happy endings. By the early Middle Ages, considered the classical period of Sanskrit drama, there were very few Indian plays with unhappy endings being produced. By then, it became a general rule in Sanskrit drama to avoid unhappy endings.^[29]

The Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara, written by Bhāsa, are two of the few surviving ancient Sanskrit plays with sad endings. Though branded the villain of the Mahabharata, Duryodhana is the actual hero in Uru-Bhanga shown repenting his past as he lies with his thighs crushed awaiting death. His relations with his family are shown with great pathos. The epic contains no reference to such repentance. The Karna-bhara ends with the premonitions of the sad end of Karna, another epic character from Mahabharata. Classical Sanskrit plays, inspired by Natya Shastra, strictly considered sad endings inappropriate.

The plays are generally short compared to later playwrights and most of them draw the theme from the Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana. Though he is firmly on the side of the heroes of the epic, Bhāsa treats their opponents with great sympathy. He takes a lot of liberties with the story to achieve this. In the Pratima-nataka, Kaikeyi who is responsible for the tragic events in the Ramayana is shown as enduring the calumny of all so that a far noble end is achieved.

See also

• Classicism
• Comedy
• Domestic tragedy
• Hamartia
• Peripeteia
• Shakespearean tragedy
• She-tragedy
• Tragic hero
• Tragicomedy

Notes

1. ^ "tragedy", p. 1637 in E. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Volume II L-Z, Elsevier (1967)
2. ^ Banham (1998, 1118). In his speculative work on the origins of Athenean tragedy, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche writes of this "two-fold mood": "the strange mixture and duality in the affects of the Dionysiac enthusiasts, that phenomenon whereby pain awakens pleasure while rejoicing wrings cries of agony from the breast. From highest joy there comes a cry of horror or a yearning lament at some irredeemable loss. In those Greek festivals there erupts what one might call a sentimental tendency in nature, as if it had cause to sigh over its dismemberment into individuals" §2 (Speirs 1999, 21).
3. ^ Banham (1998, 1118) and Williams (1966, 14-16).
4. ^ Williams (1966, 16).
5. ^ Williams (1966, 13-84) and Taxidou (2004, 193-209).
6. ^ Felski (2008, 1). See Dukore (1974) for primary material on most of these philosophers' writings on tragedy and Carlson (1993) for an analysis of them. Walter Benjamin's major work on tragic form is The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928). Gilles Deleuze develops his theory of tragic representation in his collaboration with Félix Guattari, Anti-Œdipus (1972).
7. ^ See Carlson (1993), Pfister (1977), Elam (1980) and Taxidou (2004). Drama, in the narrow sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialization from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects (Non-Aristotelian drama and Theatre of the Oppressed respectively) against models of tragedy. Taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation (2004, 193-209).
8. ^ ^{a b} Brockett and Hildy (2003, 13).
9. ^ This text is available online.
10. ^ Ley (33-34)
11. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 43).
12. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 36, 47).
13. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 43). For more information on the ancient Roman dramatists, see the articles categorised under "Ancient Roman dramatists and playwrights" in Wikipedia.
14. ^ ^{a b} Brockett and Hildy (2003, 47).
15. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 49).
16. ^ ^{a b} Brockett and Hildy (2003, 50).
17. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 49-50).
18. ^ quoted in Christopher Headington, Roy Westbrook and Terry Barfoot (1987) Opera: a History p.22 of 1991 Arrow edition
19. ^ Headington et al. p.178
20. ^ Miller (1949, 894).
21. ^ Barker (1989, 13).
22. ^ Aristotle. Poetics, Trans. W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1932. Section 1452b
23. ^ Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg. Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. Page 178
24. ^ Poetics, Aristotle
25. ^ Aristotle, Poetics. Section 1135b
26. ^ Chiari, J. Landmarks of Contemporary Drama. London: Jenkins, 1965. Page 41.
27. ^ Banham (1998, 517).
28. ^ Hermann Oldenberg (1922), Das Mahabharata, Göttingen
29. ^ Saunders, Virginia (1921), "Some Literary Aspects of the Absence of Tragedy in the Classical Sanskrit Drama", Journal of the American Oriental Society 41: 152–6, doi:10.2307/593715 

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• Miller, Arthur. 1949. "Tragedy and the Common Man." In Dukore (1974, 894-897). Originally published in The New York Times February 27 1949.
• Pfister, Manfred. 1977. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Trans. John Halliday. European Studies in English Literature Ser. Cambridige: Cambridge UP, 1988. ISBN 052142383X.
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• Taxidou, Olga. 2004. Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. ISBN 0748619879.
• Williams, Raymond. 1966. Modern Tragedy. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0701112603.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - tragedie, sørgespil, tragik

Nederlands (Dutch)
tragedie, treurspel, drama, tragiek

Français (French)
n. - (gén, Théât) tragédie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Tragödie, Trauerspiel

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - τραγωδία

Italiano (Italian)
tragedia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - tragédia (f)

Русский (Russian)
трагическая ситуация, трагическая пьеса/опера и т.д., трагедия

Español (Spanish)
n. - tragedia, drama

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - tragedi

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
悲剧, 悲惨, 惨案

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 悲劇, 悲慘, 慘案

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 비극, 비참한 사건, 비극 창작법

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 悲劇, 悲劇的事件

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) المأساة, ألتراجيديا‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אסון, סיפור עצוב, טרגדיה‬

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