The tragic hero and the tragic

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Shakespeare's tragedies are, for the most part, stories of one person, the "hero," or at most two, to include the "heroine." Only the Love Tragedies (Romeo and Juliet; Antony and Cleopatra) are exceptions to this pattern. In these plays, the heroine is as much at the center of action as the hero. The rest of the tragedies, including Macbeth, have single stars, so the tragic story is concerned primarily with one person.

THE TRAGIC HERO AND THE TRAGIC "STORY"

  • The tragic story leads up to, and includes, the death of the hero 
  • The suffering and calamity are exceptional 
  • They befall a conspicuous person 
  • They are themselves of a striking kind 
  • They are, as a rule, unexpected 
  • They are, as a rule, contrasted with previous happiness and/or glory 

On the one hand (whatever may be true of tragedies elsewhere), no play that ends with the hero alive is, in the full Shakespearean sense, a tragedy. On the other hand, the story also depicts the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes and leads up to his death. It is, in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity, conducting the hero to death.

Shakespeare's tragic heroes will be men of rank, and the calamities that befall them will be unusual and exceptionally disastrous in themselves. The hero falls unexpectedly from a high place, a place of glory, or honor, or joy, and as a consequence, we feel that kind of awe at the depths to which he is suddenly plunged. Thus, the catastrophe will be of monumental proportions. A tale, for example, of a man slowly worn to death by disease, poverty, little cares, sordid vices, petty persecutions, however piteous, would not be tragic in the Shakespearean sense of the word. Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and generally extending far beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are essential ingredients in tragedy, and the chief sources of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity.

ONLY GREAT MEN QUALIFY AS TRAGIC HEROES

  • Peasants (merely because they're human beings) do not inspire pity and fear as great men do 
  • A Shakespearean tragedy, then, may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man of high estate! 

The pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we say, are the same in a peasant and a prince. But not to insist that they cannot be so when the prince is really a prince, when the story of a prince, or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own is a mistake. His fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire; and when he falls suddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man, and the omnipotence--perhaps the caprice--of Fate or Fortune, which no tale of private life could possibly rival. Such feelings are constantly invoked by Shakespeare's tragedies--again, in varying degrees.

To this point, then, we can extend the definition of Shakespearean tragedy to "a story of exceptional calamity, leading to the death of a man of high estate." That's adequate for now. Clearly, there is much more to it than that.

TRAGEDY, HUMAN FLAWS, AND RESPONSIBILITY

  • The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent-- 
  • The calamities of tragedy proceed mainly from actions, and those, the actions of men-- 
  • Shakespeare's tragic heroes are responsible for the catastrophe of their falls. 

We see a number of human beings placed in certain situations, and from their relationships, certain actions arise. These actions cause other actions, until this series of interconnected deeds leads to complications and an apparently inevitable catastrophe.

The Effect of such a series on the imagination is to make us regard the sufferings which accompany it, and the catastrophe in which it ends, not only or chiefly as something which happens to the persons concerned, but equally as something which is caused by them. This at least may be said of the principal persons, and among them, of the hero, who always contributes in some measure to the disaster in which he perishes.

The Center of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with equal truth to lie in action issuing from character, of flawed perceptions, and human frailty for which the hero is ultimately responsible. In Shakespeare, the hero recognizes his own responsibility for the catastrophe which befalls him too late to prevent his death.

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THE ABNORMAL, THE SUPERNATURAL, FATE/FORTUNE/CHANCE

  • Shakespeare occasionally represents abnormal conditions of mind: insanity, somnambulism, hallucinations-- 
  • Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural: ghosts and witches who have supernatural knowledge-- 
  • Shakespeare, in most of the tragedies, allows "chance" in some form to influence some of the action-- 

These three elements in the action are subordinate, while the dominant factor consists in deeds which issue from character.

The Abnormal Conditions of mind are never introduced as the origin of any deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking has no influence whatsoever on the events that follow ...

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