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SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

LECTURE I

Literature I
Teacher: Ana Iriarte
REASONS FOR STUDING SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeares ability to summarize the range


of human emotions in simple yet profoundly
eloquent verse.
We use his quotations.
He wrote great stories and poems.
He is one of the greatest writers and nowadays
his texts have a huge impact in our lives.
Shakespeare invented his share of stock
characters, but his truly great characters
particularly his tragic heroes are unequalled
in literature.
INTRODUCTION
Our object will be called dramatic
apresiation to increase our understanding
and enjoyement of shakespeare works.
THE SUSTANCE
OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
Shakepeare in writing tragedies represented
a certain aspect of life in a certain way.
The hero is the prominent character, so the
tragic story is concerned primarly with the
death of this person and secondly with the
troubled part of his life.
The suffery and calamity are exeptional.
They are essential ingredients as a rule
unexpected and contrasted with previous
happiness or glory. They affect the hero.
The tragic emotions the written texts show
us are:

PITTY: the propotions of this ingredient vary


greatly.
HUMAN SYMPATHY: it is related with the
emotion of pitty.
FEAR: this ingredient will not diminish but will
be modified accordingly.
Shakespeare was always concerned with
people of high degree like princes, kings,
leaders, or members of great houses whose
querrels are of public moment. The fate of
them affect a hole nation or empire, and
when they fall from the greatness to the dust,
it produces a sense of contrast between
powerlessness and omnipotence, fortune or
fate.
Also the hero is a person of high degree or of
the public importance, but always fail to
reach tragic dimensions.
The calamities of tragedies do not simply
happen, nor are they sent, they proceed
mainly from actions of men. We see a
number of human beings placed in certain
circumstances, and we see, arising from the
cooperation of their characters in certain
actions. This actions beget others, and those
others beget others again, until these series
of inter-connected deeds leads by an
apparently inevitable sequence to a
catastrophy and a we sed the hero is always
contributing in some measure to the disaster
in which he perishes.
The story of action of a shakespearean
tragedy has the deeds as the predominant
factor and these deeds are actions in the full
sense of the word.

We can assume that acts or ommisions


throughly expressive of the doer. So the center
of the tragedy may be said with equal truth to
lie in action issuing from character, or in
carcter issuing in action.
The main source of these deeds is character.
Character is destiny and there is no doubt
that is an exageration.
ELEMENTS OR FACTORS THAT ARE
TO BE FOUND IN THE ACTION.
ABNORMAL CONDITIONS OF MIND: for example
insanity, somnambulism, hallucinations. But
these conditions are never introduced as the
origin of deeds of any dramatic moment.
THE SUPERNATURAL: for example ghosts and
witches who have supernatural knowledge.
This element cannot be explained away as an
ilusion in the mind of the characters. It does
contribute to the action and is an
indispensable part of it. It is always placed in
the closest relation with character.
CHANCE OR ACCIDENT: it will be any
occurence (not supernatural) which enters
the dramatic sequence neither from the
agency of a character nor from the
circumstances. It is an appreciable influence
at some point in the action.
SORT OF CONFLICTS IN THE
TRAGEDY
OUTWARD: action is the center of the story. The
conflict is concived as lying between two persons
or two groups and the hero is the leading figure.
We may say that tendences, ideas or principles
are the combatants. And at least as much as the
conflict between the groups or the two
characters, is the conflict within one of them.
INNER: it is in the heros sole. For example
forces that act in the human spirit, whether
good or evil, doubts, desires, scruples that drives
the mans soul. Those forces are shown in
conflict. As a rule the hero is torn by an inward
struggle and here Shakespeare shows his most
extraordinary power.
CHARACTERISTICS OF TRAGIC HEROES
He is the protagonist of the story and is an expetional being.
He is of a noble status and is public important.
His actions or sufferings are of an unusual kind.
He needs to be good but he possesses a human tendency to
make errors.
Because of his position, his actions usually have far reaching
effects.
He often has a distorted perception of reality.
He is the leading figure and always gets pitty, human
symphaty and fear from the audience.
Some of them have genius.
He tend to have flaw. For example: procastination, delate or
non-action.
His nature is exeptional. And generally raises him in some
respect much above the average level of humanity.
The protagonist always acepts his mistakes but he becomes
estranged from the world around him.
TRAGIC TRAIT
One of the tragic trait is that is that some tragedies end
in death, destruction or in chaos. The principal
characters fail to reach tragic dimensions or seem
destined to end tragically.
In some circumstances, the heros tragic trait is his
greatness nad it is fatal to him. He errs and his errors
brings on him ruin. The fatal error is of different kinds
and degrees. It involves no concious breach of right or is
accompained by a full conviction of right. For example:
in Hamlet there is a painful conciousness that dutty is
being neglected.
In almost all the heroes we observed a marked one-
sidedness, a predisposition in some particular direction;
a total incapacity of resisting the force which draws in
this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole
being with one interest, object, passion or habit of
mind. This is for Shakespeare the fundamental tragic
trait.
CENTRAL FEELING CONNECTED
WITH THE TRAGIC IMPRESSION
It is related with the feeling of waste. The pitty and fear
which are stirred by the tragic story seem to unite with a
profound sense of sadness and mistery and is due to this
impression of waste.
Also there is the idea of fatality and glance at some of
the impressions. The fault is being the sole of suffering.
The blindness and helpessness of man would hardly
suggest the idea of fate which means that a man is
terribly unlucky.
The characters contribute to the feeling of fatality and
make us think of the action and suffering of the person
as somehow arbitrary fixed before hand without regard
to their feelings, thoughts and resolutions.
THE ULTIMATE POWER IN THE
TRAGIC WORLD
It is FATE, which implies that these order is a
blank neccesity totally regardless alike of a
human will and of the difference between
good an evil or right or wrong. On the
contrary others describe the name of fate as
a moral order and its necessity as a moral
necessity. It brings into the light those
aspects of the tragic fact which the idea of
fate throws into the shade.
POETIC JUSTICE
Tragedy is the exhibition of a reaction. The tragic
suffering and death arise from collision, not with a
fate but with a moral power. This perception
produces a feeling of acquiescence in the
catastrophe. And finally this view seems quite able to
do justice to those aspects of the tragic fact which
give rise to the idea of fate.
The moral order acts not capriciously or like a human
being, but from the necessity of its nature by general
law.
In our opinion poetic justice means that prosperity
and adversity are distributed in proportion to the
merit of the agent. So, each character deserves the
punishment or prize accordingly with their attitude in
the tragedy which is also related with the moral
values.
PLACE STRUCTURE AND
TIME STRUCTURE
The place - structure depends upon no exact
location of scenes
The action of Hamlet is concentrated at
Elsinore
The story abounds in journeys
Some journeys are treated in a superfluous
way . Ex. Horatios journey form Wittenberg
The double dramatic purpose is plain
Here is a tragedy of inaction; the centre of
it is Hamlet, who is physically inactive too
The concentration at Elsinore of all that
happens enhances the impression of this
inactivity, which is enhanced again by the
sense coming and going around Hamlet of
the busier word without.
The PLACE itself acquire a personality, and
even develops a sort of sinister power; so
that when at last Hamlet does depart from it
and we are left with the conscience-sick
Gertrude and the guilty King, the mad
Ophelia, a Laertes set on his own revenge,
we almost seem to feel it.
Shakespeare adopts a unity of place
He turns TIME to dramatic use also, ignores
or remarks its passing, and use clock or
calendar as it suits him
Ex. The play open the stroke of midnight.
The first scene is measure out to dawn and
gains importance by that. In the second
within a month give past events
convincing definition, and tonighttonight
a specific imminence to what is to come
The conduct of the action changes , and with this
the treatment of time
Hamlets resolution has pale, his purpose has
slackened. He passes hour upon hour pacing the
lobbies, reading or lost in thought. So Shakespeare
also for a while tacitly ignores the calendar
If the fact is explicitly stated that two months
separate one scene from the last, that breaks our
sense of a continuity helps to sustain illusion, and
so hold us attentive.
The reason for ignoring time is that Hamlet is
ignoring it, and he want to attune the whole
action to Hamlets mood.
When less the tension of the action, the clock
must be restarted, a phrase is made to serve.
The use of time has begun again with Hamlet
s fresh impulse to action (tomorrow)
The time measure is only used to validate
the dramatic speed, even as was
timelessness to help slow the action down
Shakespeare used gaps in time
By setting a certain time for an action, the
tension automatically increased.
Falsifying hint of time give a sense of
completeness to the action
Shakespeares true concern is with TEMPO,
NOT TIME
He uses time as an auxiliary
Time scheme:

1. Classic: this involve the ignoring than any


plain falsifying of time. The drama is
concentrate upon one capital event
2. The normal modern method. It suggested
realism in time, appropriate to a scenic
theatres realism of place
3. Shakespeares freedom in time: it is the
natural product of his stages freedom is
space, the sense of time is uncertain
WE
HOPE
YOU
ENJOYED
IT!
YUDIT NADAL
DANIELA CATTERINUZZI
MACARENA FERNANDEZ
JUAREZ ANALIA

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