Shakespearean plays have much been linked to Aristotle’s ideas of tragedy, the protagonists are capable of both good and evil and must be an admired yet flawed character. The protagonist supposedly always has free will; although always seems to move unheedingly to their doom.
Elizabethan tragedies differed slightly from Aristotelian tragedies; they generally had much more morbid endings in which the protagonist would die compared to the Aristotelian tragedy in which the protagonist would live.
There are a few different styles of tragedy:
- Tragedy of circumstance – Most plays of this type deal with the monarch and generally revolves around the tragic circumstance that the protagonist is in by no fault of his own, this kind of tragedy is based on the situation that the protagonist is in rather than his choice.
- Tragedy of miscalculation – These revolve around a bad or unlucky choice which is a miscalculation made by the protagonist.
- Revenge tragedy – These tragedies combine the previous two but generally also revolve around the protagonist wishing to seek vengeance on someone who has affected him or someone close to him in some way. These tragedies of course always contain an element of revenge.
Shakespearian plays generally are five act plays ending with the death of the most prominent characters. His plays all revolve around defeat, shattered hopes and ultimately death, these are things that face all of us as human beings and this allows us to identify ourselves with the protagonist, moreover the protagonist generally has either intelligence, cleverness, foolish vanity or even maybe a treacherous side which helps us to be able to identify ourselves with the protagonist further. We also hear the thoughts of the protagonists in soliloquy’s throughout the plays which allows us to create a personal bond with the character as what we are hearing are the protagonists’ thoughts.
The paradox of life then death is very important in Shakespeare’s tragedies as death is the very heart of the paradox of disappointment and is the embodiment of defeat. Death is not used as an extreme expression of human suffering; it is used symbolically to emphasise the disappointment and defeat that accompany it. Shakespeare’s tragedies don’t give us an answer to the paradox of life but challenge us with it making it more interesting and yet confusing for the audience at the same time.
In Shakespearean tragedies the protagonist or an important character always dies they are essentially a tale of suffering and calamity leading to death which contrasts with previous happiness or glory of the protagonist. The reasons for the death of the protagonist in Shakespearian tragedies are contributed by the actions of the protagonist himself, because of a fatal tendency in the protagonist’s personality. It is quite alien in Shakespearian tragedy that the protagonist is destroyed solely by external forces. There is always supposed to be a sense of free will in Shakespeare’s tragedies, although whether the protagonist meant ill or good, it makes no difference they always seem to end up achieving the complete opposite of what they set out to achieve and end up destroying themselves, which makes it seem as if they are of course not in control of their own destiny. Human action is definitely presented as the central fact in tragedy and we generally hold the hero responsible for the tragedy because of this. There is always a sense that there is a force of good and evil in his tragedies with them ending with evil in the upper hand position.
To conclude there are a few main features that Shakespeare’s plays have in common. They start off in a happy ordered society which moves slowly towards chaos as the hero allows his flaws to rule him. And probably most importantly the play features a hero whom the audience can relate to and feel sorry for. The protagonists in Shakespeare’s plays are not really good or really bad people but just generally good people who are destroyed by their own ego or ill fate.
By Ben Peppin 10s
