I.

On Catharsis and Tragedy

By Zlatka Angelova Stankova (May, 2006,UCL)

I. The Notion of Catharsis

(Literature Review)
The main hypothesis of this paper is that the primary catharsis
of/with/through/in tragedy is an introvert, inverse journey towards a psychological
condition of a child, called by Jacques Lacan the “mirror stage”1. By experiencing a
good performance of tragedy every single individual in the audience must live through
a stage model similar to his/her own personal “mirror stage”, thus depriving him/herself
for a while from assumed religious, social or personal images. The sum of these
assumed images I will call “the tragic myth”. The conscious understanding, acceptance
or rejection of these images during the play and via the stage model of the “mirror stage
“will be referred to as a catharsis.
That is not to say that the paper will disregard the leading notion of catharsis as
psychoanalytical healing of past painful traumas. On the contrary, the latter could be
experienced by some members of the audience but this kind of catharsis is always a
secondary one and practically cannot concern the audience as a community. On the
other hand, a collective type of catharsis could exist in cases of archetypal purification
from historical past. This third type of catharsis is related to what K.G. Jung defines as
a “collective archetype”, which is to say that regress far beyond personal
unconsciousness could not be determined as a primary one. Terminological
systematization of the terms in view of the new hypothesis of catharsis will be
introduced in the second chapter.
The theoretical explanation of the theatrical mechanism that makes possible the
“mirror stage” catharsis as a primary type demands an interdisciplinary approach and
hence literature from different academic fields. The bibliography at the end of the
dissertation as well as the development of the thesis includes relevant information of
authors and titles.
The present literature review, however, discusses only texts that exceptionally
develop a theory of tragic catharsis and are related to the new hypothesis. They are
many important books and titles in this field. This chapter will specify the approaches
in seven of them since they convey the two principal interpretation of catharsis.
The first book, without doubt, is Aristotle’s Poetics.

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 This short text is the alpha and omega not only in the genre of tragedy but of
Literary and Arts Theory as well. It considers the genre of tragedy from all the possible
view points: artistic, aesthetic, linguistic, psychological. The intriguing notion of tragic
catharsis is presented as a part of the general definition of the genre in Chapter IV. The
brief description of catharsis is: “through pity and fear effecting the purgation of these
emotions”2. The whole theoretical discourse on the tragic encounter of the performance
with the audience consists in this controversial denotation.
The best overview of the polemics on all the possible translations and readings
of the passage still remains the work of Gerald F. Else: ”Aristotle’s Poetics: The
Argument.”3 This book is an exceptional investigation in all the possible meanings of
the Old Greek text and thus with an erudite consideration of Drama theory. Prof. Else
summarizes the leading idea of scholars: “the catharsis-clause, whatever it means, has
to do with the emotional reaction of the spectator.”4 He ascribes, however, another
function to catharsis: “a transitive or operational factor within the tragic structure itself,
precedent to the release of pity, and ultimately of the tragic pleasure, rather than be-all
and end-all of tragedy itself.” 5
This understanding of tragedy is embodied in the J.W. von Goethe’s insight on
catharsis. Goethe gazes at catharsis as “ein voruebergehendes Phaenomen im Gemuethe
und Geiste des Zuschauers, das der tragische Dichter hervorzurufen verpflichtet ist”.6
A substantial academic research with similar conclusion is the book of Dr.
K.G.Srivastava, “Aristotle Doctrine of Tragic Catharsis”.7 This text is focused on the
catharsis in all types of arts and corresponds to Aristotle’s “second catharsis” in his
“Politics”.8
… if catharsis means the aesthetic of structural purification of the events then catharsis would
emerge as the function of all art-forms and not of tragedy exclusively. My answer is “yes”. But it must
not be forgotten that tragic catharsis distinguishes itself by working on the vents of pity and fear and not
just any events.9

The notion of catharsis as consciously presupposed in the structure of tragedy

by the poet, dramatist, playwright is mainly discussed by the last three authors Goethe,
Gerald F. Else, K.G. Srivastava. The type of catharsis only as a powerful spiritual
impact on the audience and not as a structural element of the play is to be sought in
almost all the other books on this topic. A summary of the view point is drawn in “The
Argument” by G. F. Else:

2
 They almost all agree that Aristotle is talking about a change of feeling, or even of character,
which tragedy brings about in the spectator. They all assume that this effect is automatic and is produced
by all “tragedies”.10

The four approaches that will be discussed next are most original in the endless
chain of texts on catharsis as a purgative process in the audience. The first implication
belongs the profound drama theoretician: G.E. Lessing. In his “Hamburger
Dramaturgy”11 he describes the moral aim that Aristotle (!) ascribed to tragedy. It
consists in the effect of tragedy that turns the passions into virtues. Lessing thinks the
process of catharsis beyond the stage only, in the souls of the spectators. He also did
not explain if the change of vices into virtues is one-way final process or it could work
vice versa also. The latter observation could be read in Book 10 of Plato’s “Republic”.
Socrates by reasoning the idea of transgression banishes “the tragic poets” from the
ideal state: their presentation of human weaknesses worked as the box of Pandora
according to his mega-dialogue “Republic”.12
Sigmund Freud13 (XIXth century) and the psychological discoveries of XXth
has turned the action of tragic catharsis into a scientific discovery - the psychoanalytical
method aimed at healing of past psychological traumas. Freud refocused the attention
from the wide theatrical stage onto the human mind, thus transferring catharsis into a
spiritual medicine.
The Freudian split with the Jungian idea of the collective unconsciousness and
the shift of his attention onto the personal subconscious in Shakespearean tragedy is
justified by the following hypothesis to be investigated: Does Shakespeare himself
intuitively use his Globe theatre as a spatial model of the human mind. It could be
observed especially in cases when Shakespeare creates during the play cathartic
circumstances for his tragic characters.
Sigmund Freud himself owes his main pathological examples to Shakespeare’s
tragic characters. His total negation of Hamlet for example could be perceived as a
creative jealousy of the famous psychiatrist towards the genius of Shakespeare and
reminds us of Oscar Wilde’s ironic suggestion for the greatest question raised by
Hamlet: “Are my critics mad or only pretending to be so?” The complicated perspective
in the plays of the English poet denies all possible categorical conclusions and makes
Sigmund Freud resemble Hamlet’s uncle Claudius when he calls his nephew: “Poor

3
wreck!” The suggested catharsis in Shakespeare’s plays by Sigmund Freud is the
purification of a psycho pathological state of mind:
(…) if we recognize the conflict, we forget that he (Hamlet) is a sick man, just as, if he himself
recognizes it, he ceases to be ill. (…) It would seem to be the dramatist’s business to induce the same
illness in us; and this can best be achieved if we are made to follow the development of the illness along
with the sufferer.14
Although Sigmund Freud describes the cathartic process as taking course
mainly in the audience’s mind, he recognizes that the dramatist is the person who can
force the move in people’s souls. This viewpoint is near to the understanding of Goethe,
G.F. Else and K.G. Srivastava of the catharsis as a structural element of the play.
Sigmund Freud, however, never speaks about a performance on stage, he only considers
the literary text.
Cathartic effect is necessary according to Freud since latent psychological
diseases are common features in every man’s mind, it is just that they are not realized.
Psychological catharsis in Freud’s terms is reconciliation with our unconsciousness and
its “uncanny”15 images, justifies the presentation of psychological transgressions in the
theatre and makes the human being be aware of his/her own borders.

In general, it may perhaps be said that the neurotic instability of the public and the dramatist’s
skill in avoiding resistance and offering fore-pleasures can alone determine the limits set upon the
employment of abnormal characters on the stage. 16

Shakespeare’s tragedies are the main literary base of the heuristic book of
Robert Boies Sharpe “Irony in the Drama: an essay on Impersonation, Shock, and
Catharsis”.17 R.B. Sharpe is not interested in Shakespeare’s tragic character as a
prototype of psychological diversion, they, however, have to be purified in the course
of the play, thus causing a compassion or pity (Aristotle’s eleos18 - to write the word in
old Greek) in the observers, followed by spectators’ empathy with the tragic character
and hence their impersonation, that proceeds in fear (Aristotle’s fobos) and ends up in
cathartic feeling of being alive despite personal sins and weaknesses.
The main idea of R.B.Sharpe - to connect impersonation and catharsis is in
accordance with the principal idea of this dissertation that a transition through the
“mirror stage” during the tragic performance excavates for the images of
Freud’s ”Ego”19, thus being a type of impersonation process. It provokes the rare

4
opportunity the “everyday’s human life” to be observed from a detached, “objective”,
that is to say “ironic” view point.

Working with these two terms, impersonation and irony (…) and the
employment of the horrible and the shocking (…) and to find a reasonable relation
between some or all of these phenomena and the mysterious psychological process
Aristotle called dramatic catharsis.
And as for ironic shock, the drama’s highest achievement in the communication
of emotion is the ironic psychological state Aristotle called catharsis. (…) And the
purged or purified state in which one is left at the end of a great tragedy is an ironic
mood in which good and evil, triumph and disaster, are somehow balanced,
harmonized, and transcended.

R.B.Sharpe also suggest a description of a stage mechanism for achieving a

cathartic effect that is worth to be read not only by Drama theoreticians but also by
theatre directors. He is also the first scholar who connects in his research the idea of the
catharsis as a psychological effect and as a structural element of the performance at the
same time. Unlike Freud, Dr. Sharpe investigates not only the textual dimension of the
play but the whole theatrical mechanism of the tragic performance. He proposes eight
chief steps in the process:

First, the concentration of the audience’s attention, the rhythms of prose and
poetry in the actors’ speech, the music, the lights, the calculated groupings, poses, and
movements, begin their work of partial group-hypnosis upon the audience - suggesting,
as Freud says, eine Verlockungspraemie, a fore-pleasure.
Second, then, comes the introduction of the hero. We are made to feel that he is
worthy of our concern, of our increasing identification or empathy, by various devices
which establish his “magnitude” - physical, mental, moral, social, political, and so on.
Third, as soon as the hero is well introduced, we are made to hear a suggestive
tolling of the bells of doom.
Fourth, action and struggle, building up toward the turning point, intensify
greatly our taking of sides with the hero in the violent, passionate game against
whatever or whoever his antagonist may be.

5
 Fifth, shocks to our sense of order, decency, and decorum, produced by visible
“horrors” or through imagery, stir us to emotional depths far beneath the everyday level
of the conscious mind.
Sixth, at a point just before the final catastrophic downturn of the hero’s fortunes
(…) for here the playwright blinds his hero to what the audience sees, that is hybris.20
(...) Whatever we moderns believe about fate, we feel uneasy at seeing it defied.
Seventh, the hero has by now (and probably not completely until now) become
what Jung calls a symbol, Fraser a scapegoat, to the audience - that is, a human figure
upon whom we are able to load our emotions, from our loftiest to our lowest, our hopes
and our sins, through such a deep and complete emotional identification that he can
carry them away with him into heaven or the wilderness and so free us of the burden
and the tension of keeping them for ourselves.

Eighth, then, is the hero’s death. Ironically, he wins and loses (…) By an ironic
paradox this finality is not utterly final. The audience feels that the hero’s being goes
on, after his death, in some purified form; and this feeling parallels the audience’s
about itself, that its life goes on, but purified by the tragedy it has witnessed and shared.

The book of R.B. Sharpe seems to exhaust the topic of catharsis, impersonation,
shock and irony. However, it does not explain, why this ironic detachment via catharsis
is possible for us as human beings.

The main idea of the book of T.J.Scheff, “Catharsis in Healing, Ritual, and
Drama”, is connected with the release of emotions by the cathartic effect. Dr. Scheff
believes that when a certain individual experiences cathartic laughing or crying, he/she
is unaware of the unconscious source of a psychological distress and this type of
catharsis is the primary one according to his book. The research of T.J.Sheff pretends
to be a scientific one. He does not explain, however, how the theatre mechanism works
in the proposed cathartic process.
As we can observe the ideas of the notion of catharsis pulsate between the
undesratnding that catharsis should be produced in the very structure of the theatrical
events and the view that is a par excellence psychoanalytical effect of a good tragedy.
In the next chapter I will present a brief glossary of the main terms that will be used in
the argument.

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 II. Terminological classification

There are three general terms that need to be cleared: “myth”, “mirror stage”,
“fragmented body”. This text takes for granted that the Freud’s notions of Id, Ego and
Super Ego are well known as well as “consciousness” and “unconsciouness”.

II.1.Myth (old Greek) - literal meaning: a story

1)Claude Levi - Strauss: The myth consists in a message that is continually
received without ever being emitted (whence the supernatural origin attributed
to it): each myth goes back to previous myths. Behind the problem of the
relations between dream and myth one discerns the problem of the relations
between myth and its variants, which may be individual or collective.21

2)Carl Gustav Jung: Myth is an creative expression of the collective

unconsciousness:

Another well-known expression of the archetypes is myth and fairy tale. (…)
The fact that myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of
the soul is something they have absolutely refused to see until now.22

3)Martin Buber: “The myth recalls an event that once occurred in the human
past. It appeals to those living in the present to learn from and emulate the experience
encapsulated in the myth.”
Martin Buber understands myths as one such means by which people pass from
I-It reality, the reality of one subject manipulating objects, to I-You meeting, the reality
of dialogue among equal subjects.1

II.2. Mirror Stage

The term “mirror stage” is coined by Jaques Lacan. “Mirror stage” is the period
between 8 and 18 months of an infant’s life when the child starts to build up his/her
Ego-images.

We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full

sense that analysis gives to the term: namely the transformation that takes place in the
subject when he assumes an image.2

1
Breslauer; Martin Buber on Myth; Garland Publishing Inc. 1990p.IX
2
lacan, jaque; Ecrits; Tavistock Publications;1977;p. 8

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 II.3. Fragmented Body (Corps Moresele)

“Fragmented body” is another notion of Jaque Lacan that determines the chaotic
pre-mirror stage where the fantasy of the child exists in a form of fragments.

These notions and terms are well known, however, I would like to remind their
main meaning since they will be used in combination with other ideas in this
dissertation, thus shifting a little bit their primary usage in literary and psychoanalytical
theory.

III. Catharsis and Catharsis

Marry, if he
that writ it had play'd Pyramus and hang'd him-
self in Tisbe's garter, it would have been a fine
tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably dis-
charged.
Theseus, V.1. 343-351
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
William Shakespeare23

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears; yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
and can say nothing …

Hamlet to the actors24

“Hamlet”, II, ii, 563-72

This chapter will try to adjust the terminological diversity to the new hypothesis
of catharsis. Let us now first analyze where is disguised the heart of each of the two
main explanations of the tragic process.
The first interpretation of catharsis asserts that this is a purification of the soul
of the spectator, auditor etc. or as the psychoanalytical theory calls it: “emotional
discharge”. The process is connected by Freud and Breuer with an externally shown
physiological abreaction: ”the whole class of voluntary and involuntary reflexes - from
tears to act of revenge - in which, as experience shows us, the affects are discharged.”25

8
 The second view is connected with the way in which this purgation can be
achieved and what kind of theatrical means in the sense of J.W. von Goethe and Gerald
F.Else should be incorporated in the plot (mythos) and represented on stage.
Thus the catharsis is not a change or end -product in the spectator’s soul, or in the fear and pity
(i.e. the dispositions to them) in his soul, but a process carried forward in the emotional material of the
play by its structural elements. 26;
These at first site diametrically opposite interpretations of catharsis could be
easily reconciled formally and substantially firstly with one of the main emphases of
Reader Response Criticism:

“… the literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the esthetic: the artistic refers to
the text created by the author, and the aesthetic to the realisation accomplished by the reader. 27

The psychological and aesthetic impact is achieved through the interaction with
the audience, the circumstances, however, need to be prepared by the performance.
It is notorious that the concept of catharsis appears only once and in a very shorts
sentence. Next to the term “catharsis” Aristotle presents the terms: “pity (compassion)
and fear” (eleos and fobos) and the six elements that constitute tragedy.
Every tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality-
namely: Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.28
Aristotle is methodologically accurate: he determines tragedy not only as a
literary text but also as a theatrical entity. Moreover, he uses two different verbs in order
to describe the actions in the play: “dran” (to do) if it concerns the written text whereas
“pratto” (to practice) when he describes the performance concrete presentation of the
same actions on stage.
The first dimension of catharsis, which is psychoanalytical experience, derives
mainly from the tragedy as a literary work. The psychiatrist provokes in dialogue the
trauma of the patient to appear on the surface. Often it is accompanied by hypnotizing
music, so that the conscious mind lift its prohibitions and expresses itself. The spiritual
pair “words - music” inaugurates not only a deeper aesthetic dimension but it also
strengthens the idea of time as a “past-present-future” continuum, thus stimulating the
regression of memory towards old traumatic events. According to Aristotle’s Politics
a similar type of catharsis could be also stimulated by music and it is not merely
connected with tragedy.

9
Paragraph 5: The same sort of effect will also be produced (i.e. by appropriate music) on those who are
specially subject to feelings of fear and pity, or to feelings of any kind; indeed it also be produced on the
rest of us, in proportion as each is liable to some degree of feeling; and the result will be that all alike
will experience some sort of purging, and some release of emotions (catharsis) accompanied by pleasure.
We may add that melodies which are specially designed to purge the emotions are likewise also a source
of innocent delight to us all.29

A deep philosophical discourse on Poetry (Words) and Sounds as a sequence of

signs in the time only could be found in Lessing’s “Laocoon”. This work also reminds
us that Pictures, on the contrary, are possible only in the space and that the theatrical
performance should coordinate the time-spatial elements in order to unfold its artistic
beauty. The first threeelements of the tragic performance: Diction, Spectacle and Song
determine the artistic frames and create opportunities for the Plot, Character and
Thought to establish the aesthetic interplay with the audience. The exact interpolation
and accordance of the six elements is necessary for a perfect artistic imitation of the
tragic plot (mythos) as one of the countless possible appearances of the collective
archetype. This perfect world, however, is necessary to be built only to be destroyed
afterwards, so that through its fragments the eternity could touch the audience.
This type of catharsis is featured by a precisely expected, genuine for the tragic
genre only purification, aims at the audience as a whole, diverges from the
psychoanalytical individual cathartic effect (though often accompanied by it) and is
profound journey to Lacan’s “mirror stage” through the archetype or the actual
collective myth. The authentic tragic performance has been always a sacred ritual in
which artists and audience are equal participants.
The purification from the personal, social or religious myths and their images
as the only possible form of life is the first effect of tragic catharsis.That is not to say
that the first catharsis as healing is not possible, it is sometimes not an necessary one.
Tragedy always includes a myth as “the only possible form of perception of the
world”30, presented by the anthropological and metaphysical duality of the
mythological images, reflected by “certain functions of the psyche, whose relationships
express the psychological life of human beings, wavering between opposite trends: to
elevate and to degrade.” The restoration of the myth is necessary for putting forward
the problem of the sacrificial crisis and its violent experience.

10
Only the necessity of the restoration of the myth makes the audience of the tragic
performance as important as the actors. “The audience is not just something, the
audience is a thought, a postulate as the Church.”3
The first aim of tragedy is to re-create the myth as a symbol in order to achieve
a sensation of comfort and coziness for both: audience and actors. The sudden
destruction of this world afterwards sharpens the senses of the participants to accept the
world beyond: the process of catharsis could end with a controversial result. It could
lead either to the idea of a deprived of utopia “nothingness” and the logical hedonistic
conclusion: “Carpe diem!” or to Plato’s “separation of soul from body which has as its
essential goal the apprehension of true reality.”31
At this point it is important to mention that Plato recognizes the cathartic effect
of Philosophy and philosophical dialogue. He never understood, however, tragedy as a
“good artistic phenomena”. Its negativity scared him and the sins that tragedy presented
were accepted in his interpretation only as a bad example of imitation in his ideal
society.

And the tragedian, since he is an imitator, will be then one whose nature is third from
the truth, and all the other imitators will be like him?4

The source of the different attitude to tragedy of Plato and Aristotle has its roots
in their altered understanding of what “good” is: on the one hand is the “good” as ethical
experience and on the other the “good” as a social reality. Plato’s “absolute good” can
not be ruined by the negative examples of the tragedy, Aristotle’s social “good” in
Magna Moralia, however, needs polemical in order the parameters of the actual “human
good” to be drawn.
It appears, then, that we must treat of what is good; and not of what is absolutely good, but
good for us men. We are not to deal with the good of the gods (…). 5

According to Aristotle what is good for the man as an individual human being
diverges from Plato’s Ideal Good. Aristotle’s good is “what is in its own nature
desirable”, and this attribute of good is different in every human being. That is to say

3
Schlegel, Fr., “Critical Fragments-1797”, "Science and Art" , Sofia, 1984; p.146
4
Plato, The Republic, Everyman’s Library, David Campbell Publishers Ltd. 1992; p.285
5
Aristotle; Metaphysics; II; books X - XIV; English translation by G. Cyril Armstrong; London;
William Heinemann, Ltd.; I, i. 7-11); p.451

11
that the “collective archetype”, “the myth” has nothing to do with the individual
experience and is not a good translation of the reality. It is just a “perfect condition”,
an ideal constellation, a collective dream, an utopia. And to participate in the building
of a perfect world and later to destroy it within “a single revolution of the Sun”(Poetics,
Ch.5) is more than an intense human experience, it is a personal Apocalypse, called
“tragic catharsis”.

IV. The Tragic Myth

What in Paris is called “the slimes of the Devil”,
in Madrid is named “the strings of the Holy Mother”
Julio Cortazar

In this chapter I will explain the cathartic mechanism in the performance of

tragedy in connection to the myth.. Three postulates are crucial. The first postulate is
represented by the necessity of recreating the tragic myth on the stage, the second
postulate is that the myth should give birth to a environment that originates what Lacan
calls “pre-mirror stage feeling”, and the third one is connected with the members of the
audience and their acceptance as atomic particles in the chaotic state of the universe.
This feeling can have two interpretations: a positiv and a negative one. The primary is
described by Giordano Bruno as “omnia in uno, omnia in omnibus, unus et omnia, unus
in omnibus”, the next one is psychiatrically determined by Sigmund Freud as the
pathological “oceanic feeling”.6
The result of experiencing this all-embracing empathy ends up in erasing the
images of the personal Ego, thus allowing the spectators to attain a detached ironic view
on their lives. The regression to the myth can make them realize not only what the
images of the Ego are, but also the reflections of their personal Id-s and Super-Ego. At
the end, they may reject them instinctively with what Freud calls “cathartic abreaction”
and afterwards to accept without “pity and fear” everyday’s vices and virtues.
Now let us examine how this effect is achieved by the performance of tragedy
itself. At this point it is necessary to determine where in the body of tragedy the tragic
myth is located. At this point I need to set the drama work on which this theory is based.

6
Freud, Sigmund; “Civilisation and its Discontent”

12
The literary base consists of the undeniable peaks in the development of tragedy as a
genre: Ancient Greek Tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy. In view of this drama
material, the appearance of the tragic myth is located in the Chorus in the Ancient Greek
tragedy and in the Globe Theatre space, the audience and the choric personae in
Shakespeare’s plays. However, in both the leading tragic character is the creator and
the living image of the myth as well as its first destroyer. The Ancient Greek protagonist
has been involved unconsciously in the creation and distraction of the myth, he/she is
a part of the polis and his/her fate could not be different from that of the society.” He
accepted people in a way in which they are presented in the public space.”7
The Shakespearean tragic characters, on the other hand, act consciously against
the social rules, which contradicts their personal fate and space.
These characters attempt to deal with life in terms of their own private emotions
and to gratify their personal passions.

The ancient tragedy must be based on the myth and conflict arises from two different ethical
sources –(…) the subjective (the protagonist) and the objective one (the myth). 8

To summarize: the difference between the tragic character in Ancient Greek

tragedy and Shakespearean one is that the former acts always as a part of the city-polis,
whereas the latter always for himself. Both of them, however, are main agents in the
recreation and distraction of the myth, thus causing their own death. The emanation of
the myth is achieved by the Chorus as a stage character in Ancient Greek Tragedy and
by the audience, choric personae and the Globe space in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

V. The Reconstruction of the Tragic Myth

in Ancient Greek Tragedy and Shakespeare’s Tragedy at the Globe

Commenting “The Reasoning of the Three Unities – of Action , Time and

Place” (1660) by Pierre Corneille, August Wilhelm Schlegel marks in his 17th lecture
of “The Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature”(1809-1811) following:

7
Staiger, E., "Gipfel der Zeit"; Artemis Verlag Zürich und München, 1979, S. 25
8
Freidenberg, Olga; “Mif I Literatura Drevnosty”(“Myth and Literature in the Ancient Times”); Moskva; Izdateliskaja firma
“Vostochnaja literatura” RAN; 1998; p. 372 (translation mine)

13
 Being far from the idea of rejecting the statute of the completely unity of the tragedy, I demand
a deeper, more innermost, more mysterious unity than this, which is appreciated by most of the art critics.
This entity I found in the tragic composition of Shakespeare so perfect, as in those of Sophocles and
Aeschylus, I couldn’t find it, however, in some tragedies, it is praised by analysing criticism as correct 9.

The apologist and translator of Shakespeare describes that inner entity in

Ancient Greek and Shakespeare’s tragedies, which, despite the diversity of their
structure, could be deemed as absolute re-creations of the tragic genre.
Tragedy as performed in Athens and London has undermined the foundations
of the material and false and has established a transient encounter with eternity.
In the theatrical space of the open-air theatres in Athens and London the myth being
always
a form of collective archetype needs to be reestablished. Why? And How?

The tragic turning point thus occurs when a gap develops at the heart of the social experience.
(…) The tragic consciousness of responsibility appears when the human and divine levels are sufficiently
distinct for them to be opposed while still appearing to be inseparable.10

The old “myth as the only possible form of life”11 must be recreated and
destroyed with the audience. The French scholar Jean-Pierre Vernant expresses his
certainty in this process in his lectures on Ancient Greek Tragedy.12 The restoration and
negation of the myth is necessary for putting forward the problem of the sacrificial crisis
of the Ego as a social reflection in the structure of the myth. As Paul Ricoeur concludes:

It is only in intention that the myth restores some wholeness; it is because he himself has lost
that wholeness that man re-enacts and imitates it in myth and rite. (…) Hence, the myth can only be an
intentional restoration or reinstatement. 13

Shakespeare translates the immanence of myth-reconstruction according to the

actual communicative situation in London. What is difference? In Ancient Greek

9
Schlegel, A.W., "Aesthetics of German Romanticism" ; "Science and Art" , Sofia, 1984; p.448
10
Jean-Pierre Vernant and Piere Vidal-Naquet ;Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece;Harvester Press Ltd. 1981;p. 4
11
Фрайденберг 2001: Фрайденберг, О. Поетика на сюжета и жанра. София: ИК "Христо Ботев", 2001; p. 16
12
I personally spoke to him about this problem during a lecture given in the French Cultural Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria.
13
Ricoeur, Paul; The Symbolism of Evil; Bacon Press Books, 1976; p.167

14
Tragedy the myth create languages, whereas in Shakespearean tragedy “languages”
create the myth.
Let us now first explain what it means by starting with the main functions of the
Chorus in Ancient Greek Tragedy and after that how they are replaced by Shakespeare
at the Globe.
The Chorus, this traditional element in Greek tragedy strikes modern taste as its strangest and
intelligible feature. (…) Its functions are instruments of dramatic irony, their contribution to our
understanding of the intellectual and moral issues that underlie certain of the plays, and their effects upon
the minds and emotions of audience and reader as required by the dramatist at each stage in the movement
of his plots.14
The functions mentioned by R.W. Burton in his research on the Chorus could
be systemized as follows: The first function is (1) to worship the Gods, the second
function is (2) to establish a constant reference point to the law, that is to say the Chorus
needs to explain why the protagonist needs to be punished and (3) to be translated so
that everybody in the audience could understand them. Moreover, there is one forgotten
feature of the Ancient Greek Tragedy because of the late Latin translation of it. This
tragedy is based on two Greek dialects - the Doric dialect of Sparta and the attic dialect
of Athens.That is to say, the parts of the protagonists in Athenian theatre were presented
in the public official Athic dialect whereas the Chorus’ lyrics was in a sacred old
fashioned “high” Doric dialect. The latter one, however, has been developed in the city-
state, an enemy of Athens as a political polis. Why?
Theatre has originated in Athens and only in Athens it had been refined … All of the great
dramatic works of the Greeks are born in the Attica area, however, their playwrights (a kind of priests as
well) had been educated in Athens. Even the fact that the Greek nation had widely disseminated… the
Greeks could be delighted only by the achievements of the Attic stage without contesting it. 15
Moreover, some of the tragic plots like “Persians” by Aeschylus present the
story of the victory of the greatest enemy of both Sparta and Athens - Persia. Why? The
Athenians and non-Athenians needed the themes and languages of the “different other”.
The theatrical connection between Sparta and Athens formed the crux of the
relationship between both ever fighting populations, thus resolving on one level the
problem of peace and war in the region. The Athenians, on the other hand, accepted
Doric dialect as the rhythm of the sacred Doric lyrics. Both parts of the audience,

14
Burton; R.W.B; “The Chorus in Sophocles’ Tragedies” by R.W.B.Burton; Emeritus Fellow; Clarendon Press, Oxford; 1980;
p.2
15
Schlegel, A.-W., "Aestetics of the German Romanticism" ; "Science and Art", 1984; IInd Lecture, p.
138

15
however, felt the stage happening as their common dream through the permanent
pulsation of the scenic image and sound.
Tragedy is always based on different languages in a Bakhtinian sense:
We are taking languages not as a system of abstract grammatical categories, but
rather language conceived as ideologically saturated, language as world view, even as
a concrete opinion … A unitary language gives expression to forces working toward
concrete verbal and ideological unification and centralization (…) but the centripetal
forces of language, embodied in a “unitary language” operate in the midst of
heteroglossia (a poly language structure) . At ny given moment of this evolution
language is stratified … into languages which are socio-ideological: languages of social
groups, “professional”, “generic’ languages, languages of generations and so forth.”16
The myth, being a symbol,17 needs at least two different parts (languages,
images, sounds etc.) to be restored.
What is a symbol? It is after all a term in the Old Greek language that signifies
a piece of memory. The master of the house gives to her/his guest the so called
“tessera hospitalis”, i.e. he/she breaks a piece of pottery, keeps the one half and
gives the other one to her/his friend. When, after thirty years, an heir of the same
guest comes again in that home, the unity is restored and recognized by
confirmation.18
The chorus is the collective character, who is supposed to complement the tragic
character in order to restore the myth in Ancient Greek tragedy. At Globe theatre,
however, Shakespeare intuitively suppresses the function of the Chorus as a separate
character. As Prof. Andrew Gurr explains in his book “The Shakespearean Stage”:
Shakespeare used a presenter as chorus in the last of his history plays in 1599,
and acknowledged the inadequacy of his illusion by asking the audience to “piece out
our imperfections with your thoughts.”19
Thus realizing that the chorus part in its classical appearance is nothing but
mere form, Shakespeare translated adequately its function by replacing it with the
audience, the choric personae and the space itself. The Shakespearean perspective,
however, is much more complicated than the Ancient Greek one. That is why, I will

16
Bakhtin, M.M.; “The Dialogic Imagination”; University of Texas Press; 1981; p.271-272
17
see Ricoeur, Paul; The Symbolism of Evil; Bacon Press Books, 1976; also Cassirer, Ernst; Language and Myth”; 1946; p. 8
“myth and langauge appear as symbols … in the sense of forces each of which produces and posits a world of its own.”
18
Gadamer, Hans-Georg; "Die Aktualität des Schoenen"; 1977 Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH@ Co., p. 41
19
Gurr, A., "The Shakespearean Stage: 1574-1642"; Cambridge University Press; p.181

16
mention in this text only how the three functions of the Chorus - to worship (1), to
impose sanctions (2) and to translate (i.e. to make clear) are presented at the Globe.
The hypnotic impact of the tragic myth, accomplished through the Chorus in
Ancient Greece is restored by the space, the audience and choric personae at the Globe.
Shakespeare refuses to include the scholastic frames of the genre and changes the
compact literary text of Chorus, Prologues, Epilogues etc. with living persons – border
roles (porters, old men, grave-digger, etc.) and the audience itself:
The made-up term “choric speech” indicates moments when a dramatic character takes on
functions of the chorus of a classic tragedy. Shakespeare’s characters often become storytellers who
partly step out of their role and comment on the dramatic action from a distance. In a choric speech a
character delivers information which is of interest only for the audience, not so much for other characters.
This is one of the reasons why moments of choric speech naturally invite Globe actors to make eye-
contact with the spectators.20
Generally, the connections between the “choric personae”, on one hand, and the
audience, on the other, could not be proved since they were only gestures and their
immanent meaning is lost forever.
Let us now consider what is the participation of the audience as a “choric
function”. In the Upper gallery at the Globe sat the aristocracy, which is close to the
musicians or as Prof Andrew Gurr explains: "àbove the stage level in the fronts were
the lords' rooms, which Guilpin said were 'o're the stage."25
The genius of Shakespeare uses the natural space of the Elizabethan stage and
re-locates the first two functions of the Ancient Greek chorus (to worship and to
sanction) in the upper part of the Globe that semantically is close to the heaven of
God(s) and socially separates the common people from the chosen ones. In this way the
music is used to create the feast atmosphere of the performance and the image of the
aristocracy always reminded that the law of the God has its earthly representatives.
From this higher view point this part of the audience could “observe”, listen with “its
mind’s eye” the movement of the stage and to enjoy the poetry in accordance with
August Wilhelm Schlegel’s assertion that “the Chorus is the ideal hearer”21. In this way
Shakespeare uses the presence of the noble people as pictorial image of the public and

20
Koch, Schulte, Eva; Unpublished Dissertation; “Aspects of the Audience Control at Shakespeare’s
Globe Theatre London; p.5
25
Gurr, A., "The Shakespearean Stage: 1574-1642", p.145
21
Schlegel, A.W., "Aesthetics of German Romanticism" ; "Science and Art" , Sofia, 1984; p.402, 5 th
lecture

17
 goddess law. Moreover, their splendid clothing was a perfect supplement to the stage
settings. Both faces of this tragic Janus, the Chorus, are projected on the upper and
lower part of the Globe space: the first one is a harmonious and elevated and the second
one is disharmonious, subordinate to the basic instincts. Nietzsche’s statement that the
Chorus is “a lively wall, which the tragedy erected round itself, in order to be fully
isolated from the real world and to preserve its foundation and poetic freedom.” 22 is
fulfilled by the spatial interpolation of the choric functions at the Globe.
T The third function of the Chorus to translate the frivolous spirit of the Renaissance was
given to the standing audience.The indecent slang of the one-penny groundlings32, their
disconnected speeches and disjointed talk as well as the incoherent noises that could be heart
from the lower part of the Globe introduced another semiotic system:the language of human
instincts that hides the experience of the human flesh.
The instinct speaks vaguely and figuratively, if man does not comprehend it correctly,
it gives rise to the wrong trend. 24
Shakespeare makes brilliant use of the presence of the standing audience as stage
translators of the greatest source of tragic meaning: the animal nature of human beings.
The Aristotelian proposition that the “man is a social animal” harmonizes with
the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche that if a person leaves the society turns either into an
animal or into a god formulates the sad truth about the duality of the human existnece.
This binar opposition between “low” and “high” at the Globe despite the fact that the
Chorus did not exist reactivates its the main functions: 1) to elevates and worship the;
2) to sanction and 3) to make the myth understandable for everybodyin the audeience.
The upper and the lower part of the Globe audience represents both: the leaders
and the outsiders of the society. The genre of tragedy tells the story of the primordial
sin and the metamorphoses of a man from an ethical into both: social and animal human
being. Shakespearean characters linger between high ideals and low instincts, between
nature and spirit. Their speeches are mainly only heard by the aristocracy above the
stage.
The main audience, however, that just watches the performance is not to be
underestimated as a choric function. It includes the middle class people and seemingly

22
Nietsche, Fr."The Birth of Tragedy”, 1990, Sofia, p. 96-97

24
Schlegel, Fr."Fragments-1798”;Fr. 382"Science and Art", Sofia; 1984, p.203

18
does not have any impact. However, “the pictorial turn”23 has its roots in Renaissance
England in the desire of “stage realism” and happened because of the demanding
presence of the middle-class part of the audience. As Prof. Andrew Gurr explains in his
book “The Shakespearean Stage”:
Realism is closely linked with spectacle, and with stage business and effects, which themselves
were likely to vary according to the nature of each playing company’s repertory.24
Shakespeare re-allocates the six elements of tragedy - “plot, character, thought,
diction, music, and spectacle” and changes some of the words of the Ancient Greek
Chorus not only with the presence of the audience but also with intentionally
hyperbolized images, visions and spectacular effects.

Although it would be hard to assess the effects of newly discovered contemporary evidence for what
Aristotle calls opsis (the visual aspect of the play), (…) That we are prevented from clearly or confidently
visualizing the plays as originally performed compels us, in fact, to think about visible evidence as an
absence , or about what Karl Buehler calls the displacement between what is seen by the “mind’s eye”
and what is seen by the”bodily eye”.

The words from the Ancient tragedy have turned into images, because their roots
are in Plato’s diegesis (the epic beginning)25 which could disappear and be replaced by
pictures. Lessing in his “Laocoon” draws the border between painting and poetry but
notes in his drafts to “Laocoon” that the “collective actions could be recreated through
poetry as well as through images”. Drama as a synthetic and stage art includes both
space and time and there should be “an ever actual module” of these philosophical
categories. As Lessing explains in his “Laocoon or on the limits of painting and poetry”:
the signs of poetry unfold in time, those of painting in space and only the theatrical
performance can use them simultaneously. Shakespeare changes some of the “wordy
imagery” of the chorus with pictorial images. These changes are presupposed by the
fact that the parts of the Ancient Greek Chorus are characterized by imagery stylistics
not by a logical thought, they represent always a static picture, not a movement, and it
seemed the chorus to be a mediator between the blind spectators and the represented

23
Mitchell, W.J.T.; “Picture Theory”; p.252-253; The pictorial or visual turn, then, is not unique to our time. It is a
repeated narrative figure that takes on a very specific form in our time, but which seems to be available in its schematic form in
an innumerable variety of circumstances. (…)The mistake is to construct a grand binary model of history centered on just one of
these turning points, and to declare a single great divide between the age of literacy (for instance) and the age of visuality.
24
Gurr, Andrew; “The Shakespearean Stage” (1574-1642); Cambridge University Press; p.184
25
Plato; “Republic”; Book III

19
theatrical events.26 The choric elements at the Globe, are the perspective of the whole
community. According to Lessing “only the collective actions are common to poetry
and painting”27 and hence the Chorus, being a collective character could be represented
with words as well as with psitures. That is why the Shakespeare’s Globe myth consists
of images as well as words in order to translate the current myth adequately to
everybody in the community. As Freud points out in “The Ego and the Id”:

Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way,
too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older
than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. 28

This partial image is to substitute the myth as cultural archetype. At the Globe it
resembles the three sections of human psyche, as described by Freud – Id, the lowest
level of instincts, placed in the yard; the Ego: the main corpus of the audience that is
frontal to the stage and acts as a common sense; the Superego as the presence of the
aristocracy and musicians: the harmonic Super Ideal Image and Sanction. Every part of
the audience at the Globe has its own language, semiotic image, theatrical speech and
stage behavior.
The resistance of the protagonist could not succeed since he is an essential part of
the collective archetypal image. K. G. Jung names this image primordial one or
archetype. This image always has an archaic character and presents the unconscious
site of the myth. This collective unconsciousness is the base of the mythological mage,
which should be recreated on stage. The recreation of the myth turns the protagonist
into an agent of the chorus or audience (the collective mythological unconsciousness)
who need the myth.
The first aim of tragedy is to achieve the mythological unity in order to create a
sensation of comfort and cosyness, which contrasts to the protagonist's later falling into
the cold discomfort of an uncanny world that is deprived of utopia, a world of “the
nothingness.”

26
Slavova, Mirena; Assoc. Prof. University of Sofia; see also: Freidenberg, Olga; “Myth and Literature
of the Antiquity”; Moscow; 1978
27
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim;“Laocoon”; translation by Sir Robert Phillimore; 1910; George Routledge and Sons, Ltd.;
Appendix; XV. Of collective actions, such as are common to Poetry and Painting. (p.293)

28
Freud, Sigmund; The Ego und the Id; The Hogarth Press; London; 1962’ p.11

20
 The connection between Ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedy at the Globe
is not a historical but a typological one. Shakespeare re-allocates the six elements of
tragedy - “plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle” and functionalises
them in view of the cultural differences of the audience.
Aristotle describes the distribution of the six elements in accordance with
“imitation” but they concern the different ways of perception as well. Shakespeare,
though, rearranges them only in view of the non-homogeneous “hearers, spectators,
etc.” and their scenic ability to involve the audience in the theatrical event. The different
type of visitor’s sensuality determines the scenic and stage presence of fabulae, heroes
and theatrical means, which is to say “plot, character, thought, diction, music, and
spectacle”. The Shakespearean tragedies29 rely on human senses: hearing, sight, sense
of smell. Shakespeare, however, brilliantly accomplished it on the Globe stage by
utilising not only words but also the natural images of audience and space.
Every part of the audience at the Globe has its own language and semiotic and stage
behaviour, respectively, and corresponds to the three acting codes in Hamlet’s
“Mousetrap”
Aesthetically viewed, each stage approach contradicts the other one, tears the
theatrical entity and creates the fragmentation based not only on different languages in
Bakhtinian sense but also on controversial theatre stylistics. The stage hieroglyph of
Hamlet’s “The Mousetrap” is not only a way to unmask Claudius but also a theatre
discussion about words and actions, pantomime and speech, that creates a stage
condition near to M.Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia and the double language
structure of the Ancient Greek Thatre. Shakespearean contradicting languages,
however, could include not only words but images as well.
Moreover, the six elements: Plot, Diction, Thought, Visuality, Sound, Character
are employed to sharpen this controversy and ends up in a fragmentary image. Why?
How these fragments of the chorus are important for the cathartic effect?
At this point it is important to remind that Bakhtinian “heteroglossia” is not always
peacefully accommodated in the generic frames of the novel. In the genre of tragedy “it
pushes to the limit the mutual non understanding represented by people who speak
different languages”.30

29
. Muir, K. “Shakespeare: Great Tragedies”, 1996,
Cf. “there is not such a thing like Shakespearean tragedy, there are Shakespearean tragedies”
30
Bakhtin, M.M.; The Dialogic imagination”, 1981, The University of Texas Press; p.356

21
 VI. The Mirror Stage, Language and Corps Morsele

There are three postulates that can epitomize the multilinguistic and
fragmentary representation of the tragic myth, composed by different languages in
Ancient Greek tragedy and by mixture of images and words in Shakespeare’s one.
Firstly, the fragmentary theatrical reality stimulates the introductory hypnotic
effect according to R.B.Sharpe: “…concentration of the audience’s attention, the
rhythms of prose and poetry in the actors’ speech, the music, the lights, the calculated
groupings, poses, and movements, begin their work of partial group-hypnosis upon the
audience”
Secondly, its particularization resembles the stylistic of the dream, according to
Freud’s interpretation of dreams.33
And thirdly, in accordance to our hypothesis: it recreates the “pre-mirror stage”
of Jaque Lacan called by him corps morcele - the body in bits and pieces. Lacan
describes the work of Hieronymos Bosch as a veritable atlas of this experience.
The fragmented body - which term I have also introduced into our system of theoretical
references - usually manifests itself in dreams when the movement of the analysis encounters a certain
level of aggressive disintegration in the individual. It then appears in form of disjointed limbs, or of those
organs represented in exoscopy, growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecutions - the very
same that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in painting, in their ascent form is even
tangibly revealed at the organic level, in the lines of “fragilization” that define the anatomy of phantasy. 34
What is the connection between Bakhtinian idea of heteroglossia, Lacanian
“fragmented body” and the tragic catharsis? This question could be answered if we
consider the links between the unconscious, the language and the life itself. These
connections are presented in Wittgenstein’s theory on “language game”.
The presence of so many languages at the same space and time causes linguistic
relativity. Llinguistic insecurity affects the image of the Ego by undermining its
language game nad hence the social existence of the human. The language game is
nothing but a form of life according to Ludwig Wittgenstein.

22
23) So, you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false; and they agree in
the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. 31

If my language system is under question, my life is posed in a spatial and social

vacuum, thus lifting the prohibitions and opening widely the door to the
unconsciousness. The latter, as Claude Levi-Strauss asserts in “La Pensee Sauvage” is
structured like a language and harmonizes with Lacan’s conclusion that“the linguistic
structure gives its status to the unconscious.”32
The myth, as a story of the collective archetype is based on different languages. Ernst
Cassirer in “Language and Myth”establishes connections between both and concludes
that: “It is in the intuitive creative form of myth (…) that we must look for the key that
may unlock the secrets of the original conceptions of language.”33
The linguistic partiality of the “tragic myth” on stage awakes in our sub
consciousness the memory of our “pre-mirror-stage” experience in the chaotic world of
bits and pieces in which the Ego is destroyed. Catharsis through the mirror stage is
inverse journey to the primordial image of the myth, to a deeper layer, which does not
derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This
deeper layer is called by C.G. Jung “the collective unconscious”. It is a frightening
demon, a dangerous image, a warning voice that tears the psychological security of the
spectators and implies in their vision its violent multiple perspective “Whoever speaks
in primordial images speaks with thousand voices."35 asserts C.G. Jung and gives us
profound explanation of the multilanguage politics of the tragic myth. Catharsis appears
when the audience realises their Ego images from the inward perspective of the tragic
myth: false but secure at the same. The spectators, being a part of the re-creation of the
myth, reconcile themselves “through pity and fear” with their earthly imaginary
existence. The audience comptehends its Ego-mask but can not existence in fragments,
in form of a torn body with multiple voices.
The tragedy presents how the chorus and the choric personae, while using the
myth, turn the protagonist into “a subject, who is spoken rather than speaking” 34 in
multiple voices. In this dangerous play, he loses, however, his/her firm identity of the
Ego and remains in the world of the myth, that is to say of the dangerous form of a pre-

31
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; Philosophical Investigations; 1968; Basil Blackwell; Oxford ; p.241
32
Lacan, J; The Four Fundamantal concepts of Psycho-Analysis; 1977; Hogarth press;p.20-21
33
Cassirer, Ernst; Language and Myth; Harper and Bros; 1946; p.34
34
Lacan, J.;”The Funcion of the Language in Psychoanalysis”; Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press; 1998; p.43

23
mirror stage existence The tragic character becomes “everything and nothing” as
implied by the prophetic Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges for the personality of
Shakespeare himself.
The spectators feel “compassion and fear’ with the tragic hero, they, however, have
their way back to the languages games. The tragic character remains in the pre mordial
trap of the myth, thus becoming a subject of the myth deprived of I-Thou relationship.

The I of the primary word I-Thou is a different I from that of the primary word
I-It.
The I of the primary word I-It makes its appearance as individuality and
becomes conscious of itself as subject (of experiencing and using).
The I of the primary word I-Thou makes its appearance as person and becomes
conscious of itself as subjectivity (without a dependent genitive).35

The backwards journey to the mirror stage opens the door to the chaos in the
universe, that could be organized only by a new myth.The sacrifice is the personality
and the Ego of the protagonists.
Catharsis is to be achieved when the audience feels its corps in bits and pieces
and starts to collect them again. When a personal entity is achieved and the nightmare
is over, people won the battle with their phobias and fears, have organised them anew.
The cathartic experience leads always to the endless silence of Immanuel Kant’s
message that “things and humans in themselves” are before every event and the space
and time are only forms of their reasonable earthly existence.

VII. Hamlet’s Mousetrap: a cathartic performance or rehearsal for the death

Vastly intelligent, far beyond us - if we are not, say, Freud
or Wittgenstein - Hamlet cannot believe that the proper use
of his capability and godlike reason is to perform a revenge
killing.36
Harold Bloom “Poem unlimited”

If I can paraphrase the quotation of Harold Bloom in view of the cathartic effect
in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I would say: “Vastly intelligent, Hamlet destroys all
interpretations of his character by causing everybody in Elsinore to experience
catharsis. And not only by staging “The Mousetrap”. In this way, he undermines Ernest
Jones’s and Freud’s interpretation that he does not kill Claudius at the beginning of the

35
Buber, Martin; “I and Thou”; T. and T. Clark; 1937; p.62
NB! The similar notion is to be found in Lacanian approach to subjectivity. He asserts (The Seminars; Book II) that the Ego (the
individual subjectivity according to Buber) differs from the Subject (the personal subjectivity of I-Thou according to Buber) and
firmly announces: The subject is the other. (The I-Thou of M.Buber.) The Lacanian approach, however, is more complicated
because of the “langage - parole -language” perspective.
36
Bloom, Harold; Hamlet; Poem Unlimited; Riverhead Books; 2003; p. 69-71

24
play since he wanted his father dead as well. At the level of the plot, the whole play
(and the theatre within theatre) is organized by Hamlet in order to deprive himself and
the other characters around him of all Ego, Id, and Super ego images, thus turning
everybody in Elsinore into an pre-mirror stage embryo that needs to exist in universal
chaos. What Harold Bloom calls “the annihilation” of Hamlet is, in my opinion, a
powerful cathartic process caused by Hamlet himself.
Hamlet took his revenge, as we know, in order to set right a time that was “out of joint”. It
would be nearer the truth to say he did so in order to embody the idea of self-sacrifice.
We often display resolution or obstinacy in actions that do us nothing but harm. This, too, is a
kind of search for self-sacrifice, self-denial, duty. Strange, absurd moments of deliberately putting
yourself in someone’s debt, of dependence, of being the victim - things that the materialist, Freud, would
call masochism.37
The radical view point of the profound Russian Cinema Director Andrej
Tarkowski seems to transcend all the psychonalytical interpretations of the Western
World. Hamlet does not want to be a living image of a dead myth and he is expected to
be
If the form of the myth is the form of its central character, and if the literary
myth is true to the knowledge it seeks to image forth, then all in it must be part of that
character.38
The stage hieroglyph of the omnipresence of Hamlet is captured in “The
Mousetrap”. Let us now remember what the situation with the performance, theatre in
theatre, is. Seemingly, it is Hamlet who organizes the “Mousetrap” but in reality the
actors appear in Elsinore, after the worries about the reason for Hamlet’s lunacy. The
only choice that Hamlet makes by himself is that he changes the play itself. It is no
longer the high tragedy like the story of Dido or of Priam’s slaughter, it is a play whose
title sounds rather ironic than serious: “The Murder of Gonsago”. The decision is taken
with a gesture - sentence: “For Hecuba, why what is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba”.39
Moreover, Hamlet, as if he knew the Freud-Jones interpretation that he was a
potential murder of the old Hamlet raises his voice:
I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Hath, by the very cunning of the scene, confest a murder committed long before. 40

At this point I will not start to speculate that the murder of the old King was not

37
Tarkovsky, Andrej; Diaries;p.78
38
Aldus, P.J.; Mousetrap; Structure and Meaning in Hamlet; p.26
39
Shakespeare; The three text of Hamlet; the text of the first quarto; p.114
40
Shakespeare; The three text of Hamlet; the text of the first quarto; p.116

25
done long before and that it probably really concerns Hamlet’s subconsciousness. Even
if this is true, Hamlet knows this better than his critics.What is important in this case is
that he creates a “pre-mirror stage” image for everybody close to him. He tears the
personal Ego of the other character in fragments, thus opening the door for the universal
chaos ordered socially at the end of the play by the prince of enemies: the Norwegian
Fortinbras. The chorus as a mythological structure exists in “Hamlet” through the image
of Hamlet himself. The main character fights against the fact that he is used by the
myth (as the Ghost orders) by creating existential vacuum in the souls of the other
characters. Literally, as Ophelia says to Hamlet at the end of the Mousetrap: “You are
as good as a Chorus my Lord!” The process of alternation of Hamlet is printed in his
double presence in the play: as a main character and as a choric personae. This split is
comprehended as a disease by the audience.

Elsinore’s disease is anywhere’s, anytime’s. Something is rotten in every state, and if your
sensibility is like Hamlet’s, then finally you will not tolerate it. Hamlet’s tragedy is at last the tragedy of
personality: the charismatic is compelled to a physician’s authority despite himself; Claudius is merely
an accident; Hamlet’s only persuasive enemy is Hamlet himself. 41

Michel Foucault insists that a similar split leads to a secondary spatialization of

the disease in the human body.42

Disease, which can be mapped out on a picture, becomes apparent in the body. There it meets a
space with a quite different configuration: the concrete space of perception.43

The Mousetrap is both an attempt for the wholeness of everybody’s

consciousness to be restored or the door to the universal chaos to be opened. There are
two main reasons for this conclusion. The first one is that the tradition of performing
cures was not unknown in Shakespeare’s England. The second one is that the
presentation of death was well known in the Renaissance as well. So, the “Mousetrap”,
as an attempt of Hamlet to stage a tragedy, has an alternative exit: spiritual death or
health.

41
Bloom, Harold; Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human, Hamlet, Bloom, Harold; p.56
42
Foulcault, M; “The Birth of the Clinic”; Routledge; London and New York; 1963
43
Ibid. p.9

26
 For all illness was regarded as a preparation or “rehearsal” for death, which was the last act, the
final “performance” by a person in this life.
The emphasis on the performance of death was reflected in the drama of the period. Scenes
taking place around the death-bed of a notable person were popular in English Renaissance Drama, often
featuring the “good death” of villains who repent themselves and reconciled to their enemies. 44
Moreover, Shakespeare by using Hamlet’s mousetrap gives us a clue for the
staging method at the Globe. Hamlet’s performance consists of different performances,
different theatrical entities and in accordance with the theory of catharsis, it undermines
everyone’s security, so that the layers of the unconsciousness can be achieved, the false
images erased and hopefully new ones constructed.
Every part of the audience at the Globe has its own language and
semiotic and stage behaviour, respectively, and corresponds to Paul Hernadi’s partition
of “envisioned action”, “a dumb show” and “enacted vision”45. It is not accidental that
the unmasking performance of Hamlet in “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”
includes the three modes of presentation and representation: “a dumb show”, a prologue
and a real performance aimed at the three parts of the audience at the Globe. The one
penny groundlings will understand the dumb show, the prologue is for the aristocracy
and the real performance for the middle-class people. Aesthetically viewed, each stage
approach contradicts the other one, tears the theatrical entity and turns it into a dream.
The hypnotic impact of that ever-changing rhythm starts playing not only with Claudius
and Queen Gertrude but with the entire audience as well. Hamlet alone does not tear
the theatrical entity, he just follows the social model in front of his eyes that denies
human wholeness. As Prof. Andrew Gurr explains in “Hamlet and the Distracted
Globe”: The burden of Hamlet is his own head.”
Hamlet decides to give outlet to this oppression by staging “The Murder of
Gonsago” Further in the book, Prof. Gurr explains the psychological split in Hamlet’s
soul with his disjointed performance. “And then the “play” begins with a disconcerting
dumb-show which leaks the whole story (…) The dumb show is a slow and clumsy

44
Hatorru, Natsu; “Performing Cures: Practice and Interplay in the Theatre and Medicine of the English Renaisssance”; Thesis
submitted to the University of Oxford/Trinity College/ 1995;p.79

45
Hernadi, Paul, “Verbal Worlds between action and Vision: A Theory of the Modes of Poetic
Discourse”, College English, Vol. 33, No1, (Oct., 1971), 18-31; NB! I am very thankful to prof. Nikola
Georgiev. This idea arose during a seminar of intertextuality, led by him at St. Kliment of Okhrid
University of Sofia.

27
preface to the Mousetrap, ominous in the warning it gives of how shaky Hamlet’s
control of events is …”46
Human nature cannot exist in the chaos of the universe and Hamlet’s experiment
is unsuccessful: Ophelia becomes mad and dies, Claudius proceeds to murder, Hamlet
himself changes his personality and causes the death of his most beloved people.

IX. Conclusion

The primary catharsis of/with/through/in tragedy as an introverted, inverse journey to

our psyche is only possible if we leave the images of the Ego. It consists of
understanding the endless chaos of the universe as well as the experience that the myth
in which we live is always an incomplete and corrupted one and the only thing that we
can do is to pass once again through Lacan’s “mirror stage” and to choose our next Ego
image anew.

1
Lacan, Jaque;

2
Butcher’s translation
3
Gerald F.Else/Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument; Leiden; E.J.Brill; 1957; Published in Cooperation with the State University of
Iowa; Leiden;
4
Gerald F.Else/Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument; Leiden; E.J.Brill; 1957; Published in Cooperation with the State University
of Iowa; Leiden; p. 227
5
Gerald F.Else/Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument; Leiden; E.J.Brill; 1957; Published in Cooperation with the State University
of Iowa; Leiden; p.439

6
Jacob Walser; Lessing’s und Goethe’s charakteristische Anschauungen ueber die Aristotelische Katharsis; 1833;
“a phenomenon that passes the nature and the spirit of the spectator and it is necessarily to be caused by the tragic poet” (tr. a.)

7
Dr.K.G.Srivastava; “Aristotle Doctrine of Tragic Katharsis”; A Critical Study; Kitab Mahal; Allahabad; Delhi; Patna; Nagpur;
1982
3 Chapter of the dissertation discusses the “second” Aristotle’s catharsis
8 rd
9
Dr.K.G.Srivastava; “Aristotle Doctrine of Tragic Katharsis”; A Critical Study; Kitab Mahal; Allahabad; Delhi; Patna; Nagpur;
1982; p.162
10
Gerald F.Else/Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument; Leiden; E.J.Brill; 1957; Published in Cooperation with the State University
of Iowa; Leiden; p.226
11
“Hamburgerische dramaturgie, stueck 77, “Was endlich den moralischen Endzweck anbelangt, welchen Aristoteles der
Tragoedie giebt … ”; “Da naemlich, es kurz zu sagen, diese Reinigung in nichts anders beruht, als in der Verwandlung der
Leidenschaften in tugendhafte Fertigkeiten”; see also Lessing’s und Goethe’s charakteristische Anschauungen ueber die
Aristotelische Katharsis von Jacob Walser; 1833; p.8; “Lessing denkt sich unter katharsis einen Vorgang in der Seele des
Zuschauers, der weit ueber die Buehne hinausreicht; einen tiefgreifenden moralischen Reinigungsprocess, eine gruendliche
Besserung des Menschen im Sinne des Mitleides und der Furcht, eine Richtungstellung solcher psychischen Neigungen.”

12
Plato, Republic; “Everyman Library”
13
Freud, Sigmund, and Joseph Breuer; 1895. Studies on Hysteria. New York: Avon Books;1966
14
Freud, Sigmund; “Art and Literature”; Penguin Books; 1961; p.126

46
Gurr, Andrew; “Hamlet and the Distracted Globe”; Sussex University Press; 1978; p.9 and p.94

28
15
Freud, S; Collected Papers, Volume IV;1925; Hogarth Press,p.370; (…)The German word “unheimlich” is obviously the
opposite of “heimlich, heimisch”, meaning familiar, native, belonging to the home; and we are tempted to conclude that what is
“uncanny” (literally unhomely) is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar; “native”, “belonging to the home”.
Naturally not everything which is new and unfamiliar is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.
16
Freud, Sigmund; “Art and Literature”; Penguin Books; 1961; Psychopathic Stage Characters; p.126
17
Sharpe, R.B.; An Essay on Impersonation, Shock, and Catharsis; The University of North Carolina Press
18
eleos (old Greek) - the German translation as Mitleid is better translation than Englsih pity
19
Freud,Sigmund; “Das Ich und das Es”; Psychoanalytical Society; Wien; 1923; All the terms will be
explained further in the next chapter
20
hybris (old Greek) - in Greek tragedy - an excess of ambition, pride, etc., ultimately causing the transgressor’s ruin
21
Levi-Strauss, Claude; “Anthropology and Myth”; Lectures 1951-1982; Basil Blackwell 1984; p.21
22
C.G.Jung “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious”; Second Edition; Translated by R.F.C.Hull; Routledge; London;
1968;p.3-6
23
Shakespeare, W.; "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare"; Wordsworth Editions1996; p. 300-301
24
Shakespeare, W.; “Hamlet”; ed. J.D. Wilson
25
Freud, Sigmund, and Joseph Breuer; 1895. Studies on Hysteria. New York: Avon Books;1966;p.42; See also T.J. Scheff,
“Catharsis in Healing, Ritual, and Drama”; University of California Press; Berkely; Los Angeles, London 1979
26
Gerald F.Else/Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument; Leiden; E.J.Brill; 1957; Published in Cooperation with the State University
of Iowa; Leiden, p.439
27
Iser, Wolfgang;”The Implied Reader”;The Johns Hopkins University Press;Baltimore and London; 1974; Chapter 11: The
Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach; p.274
28
Aristotle, “Poetics”, Chapter 6
29
Politics -; Aristotle; Translated with Notes by Ernest Barker; honorary fellow of Merton College, Oxford and Peterhouse,
Cambridge; Oxford; at the Clarendon Press; 1948; p. 412
30
Freidenberg, O., “Poetics of the Plot and the Genre”, Moscow University; 2001, p.16
31
Plato; Phaedo 67c-d
32
one-penny groundling (Engl.) - the standing audience at the Globr
33
Freud, S., “Traumdeutung”, 1987, Max Hueber Vrlg
34
Lacan, Jaque; “Ecrits”; Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan; Tavistock Publications; 1977
35
Jung, C.G.;"On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" [_CW_ 15: 129]

29