Shakespearean Tragedy

D. F. Bratchell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781134967087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume reflects changing critical perceptions of Shakespeare's works from Renaissance to modern times and celebrates the power of Shakespearean tragedy. The selection of critical reaction covers both the general concept of Shakespearean tragedy and its expression in the major plays, illustrating the main directions of critical approaches to Shakespearean tragedy and enabling the reader to develop an informed response to Shakespeare's dramatic works.
An introductory chapter traces the development of the concept of tragedy from classical times, and its dramatic expression in the time of Shakespeare. Each of Shakespeare's great tragedies - Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Othello - is considered in turn, and a final chapter summarizes contemporary critical approaches so that the reader can link the best of the critical past with the present critical scene.

1

The development of tragedy

CLASSICAL TRAGEDY

Classical literary theory established tragedy and epic as the dominant literary forms, for which certain standards were defined and prescribed as necessary. Modern criticism is less certain abou genres, at best seeing them as descriptive rather than prescriptive. Tragedy has passed through many interpretations in its long history, but has dominated recognized periods of literary excellence. Nowadays there are those who think tragedy is dead, while others discern its modern version in the works of writers like Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller. In the concept itself there is no lack of interest.

The legacy of the prescriptive nature of classical theory led to controversy when criticism attempted to impose classically inspired principles on literary practice. The situation was complicated by the emergence of new literary forms like prose fiction. In drama the difficulty of equating precept with practice led to the pedantic search for genre subdivisions. Polonius’s famous outburst made the point: ‘tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem un-limited’ (Hamlet, II, ii. 392–6). Shakespeare’s implied comment on categorizing pedantry no doubt found a ready response from his audience. But however difficult tragedy is to define, Shakespeare’s relationship to the genre is worth pursuing, not because he should have conformed to the theory but in order to illuminate his practice.

The student-notes which became the Poetics of Aristotle in c.330 BC provide an essential starting-point. This first work of literary criticism was essentially practical in its basic aims. Greek attitudes were all-embracing, and the Poetics has a moral as well as a literary aim. We may now be suspicious of literature which has designs upon us, but we can recognize this aspect of Aristotle without dismissing him completely. He was known but largely misunderstood by the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance stressed dogma rather than literary insight. For Aristotle literature is knowledge, and his approach is systematic; he defines his terms, and analyses the constituent parts of his subject with scientific precision.

Aristotle’s famous definition of tragedy describes it as the imitation of an action which is serious, complete, and has magnitude; an action, that is, which is not merely trivial. The medium of tragedy is a language which is embellished with artistic ornamentation, such as melody or poetic diction. The mode employed by tragedy is dramatic, not narrative, the story unfolded by persons acting as characters who excite pity and fear, providing (for the auditors) an outlet for these emotions which effects a purgation and a sense of pleasurable relief. Aristotle’s notion of catharsis’, or a clearance of the emotions which is pleasurable and beneficial, needs to be viewed against the background of Plato’s strictures on art in general and poetry in particular. One of Plato’s views on art was that it could produce a dangerous incontinence of emotions leading to violent outbursts which were damaging to public morality.

In his analysis of the constituent parts of tragedy Aristotle lists, in order of importance, plot, character, thought, diction, song or melody, and spectacle. The primary importance of plot is insisted upon, and this is described as the life and soul of tragedy, taking precedence over character, which became so much the concern of later criticism, particularly of Shakespearean tragedy. The analysis of plot is detailed and thorough, and it is clear that Aristotle’s view of plot, defined as the imitation of an important action, is above all the requirement for evidence of an overall design or structural unity, without distraction or unnecessary digression. The organic nature of the whole, it is argued, should be such that no element can be removed without destroying the unity. This unity of action was later to be a matter for critical argument, for example over the comedy element in Hamlet, but it is clear that by plot Aristotle meant far more than the mere skeleton of a story, and modern critics who dismiss this stress on plot in the drama have not always grasped the details of the case. Ideally the plot should concentrate on one issue, centred on the character of the tragic hero, but necessarily involving other characters. Aristotle lists the plot situations which should be avoided: the good man passing from happiness to misery, because that is neither fear-inspiring nor piteous, and is merely odious; the bad man passing from misery to happiness, because this does not appeal to our emotions of pity and fear, our sense of poetic justice; an extremely bad man falling from happiness to misery, because pity is only aroused by an undeserved misfortune and fear by the predicament of one who is like ourselves. Hence the tragic hero for Aristotle is an intermediate person, not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune is brought about not by his vice or depravity but by some error of judgment.

Aristotle’s view of character was essentially to see it as part of the plot. As we shall see, this contrasts with a later view of Shakespearean character in tragedy, where characters were extrapolated from drama and given a life of their own. A difficult point to appreciate is Aristotle’s insistence on the portrayal of good characters. Greek drama was on the grand scale, with strong religious overtones, and even minor characters had to be on the heroic scale with the good elements in each character being brought out. Changes in stage conditions and the circumstances of the drama allowed more freedom in later times, but Aristotle’s view of character still serves as a reminder that unredeemed villains and spotless heroines belong to melodrama not tragedy. Characters should be appropriate to the plot, realistic and believable, and develop consistently. Unlike later critics of Shakespearean tragedy, Aristotle does not see the elements in isolation: the words and actions of each person represented in the play should be the logical outcome of the character, just as the incidents of the play are the logical outcome of the whole situation. Aristotelian tragedy may be larger than life, but it is not founded on improbabilities, and as with skilful portraiture character delineation may accentuate certain features in the service of a central plot or theme without losing likeness or credibility.

Most of the other elements in tragedy specified by Aristotle are concerned with Greek rhetoric, except spectacle. He places spectacle last, admitting that it can arouse the emotions of pity and fear, but insisting that the true pleasure of tragedy does not require its aid. In his council of moderation Aristotle warns against allowing either spectacle or character undue emphasis.

RENAISSANCE CRITICAL THEORIES

Despite changes in literary form and social context, Aristotle’s criticism remains a valuable guide, if the pedantic accretions can be brushed off. The pedantries began early in the Renaissance when critical theorists seized upon Aristotle’s text as the basis of literary prescription for a new age. They formulated a set of rules, particularly the so-called rules of the unities of time, place, and action. From the Renaissance onwards arguments about the unities have been a persistent theme in approaches to tragedy, including Shakespearean tragedy. The rules have little basis in Aristotle’s formulation for tragedy, but the neo-classical argument does not resolve itself into a simple division between disciplined classicism on the one hand and Romantic freedom on the other. There is no simple polarization between Racine and Shakespeare.

Aristotle’s one unity is carefully explained and justified in the Poetics, and that is the unity of action. By the sixteenth century Italian writers like Castalvetro were insisting that this meant the action must occupy a space of time no more than twelve hours long, and must be confined to one location. French critics like Boileau and Le Bossu, codifying rules of reason in the intellectual climate of the seventeenth century and labelling them Aristotelian, argued for adherence to the rules of place, time, and action to ensure verisimilitude. French attitudes become understandable if we examine the historical development of European drama, but it was unfortunate that instances like Voltaire’s castigation of Shakespeare for his lack of knowledge of the rules and uncouth barbarity should have helped to polarize attitudes on nationalistic grounds.

ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDIES

Ben Jonson epitomizes the English writer of the Shakespearean period who upheld the virtues of classical decorum. His qualified praise of Shakespeare with his (by comparison) ‘small Latin and less Greek’ is well known, but for all Jonson’s learned insistence on classical authority his common-sense attitude to precepts is a warning against neo-classical pedantry: ‘No precepts’, he writes, in Timber, or Discoveries, ‘will profit a fool.’ Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry was a defence of literature against the Puritans, but his use of what he understood of classical literary theory indicates the nature of classical influence in the sixteenth century in England. When he considers English drama he acknowledges that Gorboduc heightened Senecan style and morality, but as a model is deficient because it lacks the unities of time and place. Writers of English tragedy certainly owed more to the Roman writer Seneca than to the precepts of Aristotle. The nine tragedies attributed to Seneca derived from Greek originals but without the religious background, and although probably not written for performance offered distinctively theatrical elements of stories of revenge, ghosts, and grand guignol horrors. The neoclassical tradition persisted in the Inns of Court and the universities, and even in the early seventeenth century Ben Jonson, with his plays Sejanus and Catiline, hoped to rival his great contemporary Shakespeare. Writers for the public theatre selected more freely from classical sources, largely ignoring precepts but borrowing Senecan structure with modifications like the use of Dumb Show rather than Chorus, and from Gorboduc onwards using English blank verse as the poetic medium.

The development of tragedy in English drama in the sixteenth century is not simply a rejection of neo-classical theory, and an uninhibited display of Romantic freedom. Elizabethan playwrights adapted and developed for their own purposes classical form and structure, but it was the classical impetus which led to their bringing a heightened style to the public theatres. Although the humanists struggled for a neo-classical decorum, the more successful plays in the public theatre blended Romantic freedom with classical restraint. In particular, the revenge theme, with its origins in the classics, was exploited with remarkable and well-attested success in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. In this play, Senecan form is brought alive theatrically, so that the stage conventions of revenge, passionate intrigue, madness, and the supernatural, with some subtlety of character delineation, provide a dramatic external action to capture an audience. Significant dramatic possibilities, not least the theme of the hesitant revenger, were all later to be developed in Shakespearean tragedy. Departure from Greek mythology as source material for tragedy is encouraged by the popular dramatization of history in the chronicle history-plays. These plays bear the marks of Senecan form and the morality tradition, but their popularity on the public stage reflects the Elizabethan liking for Romantic incident and exciting external action. Shakespeare’s handling of historical themes, in plays with precipitate stage-action, his new insights in the character development of the main protagonists, and expressive use of poetic dialogue provided him with important elements of his approach to tragedy.

Of the many playwrights in the late sixteenth century Christopher Marlowe, who, in Ben Jonson’s phrase, developed the ‘mighty line’ of English dramatic blank verse, above all points the way toward a distinctive Shakespearean tragedy. Marlowe’s lyrically charged and passionate verse depicts strongly developed heroic central figures who express individual worth and vaulting ambition rather than princely misfortune. For Marlowe, the appeal of the tragic hero is in the nobility of the struggle, not in the moral lesson of the downfall from prosperity. With Doctor Faustus he also portrays with lyrical intensity the psychology of the inner struggle, and in his Edward II suggests the tragic pathos of an historical figure subjected to powerful rival forces in the turbulent action of chronicle history. Marlowe’s brilliant use of blank verse needed to be adapted to a more varied dramatic structure, and his exploitation of dramatic incident more firmly controlled, but his contribution to the development of an English approach to tragedy is undeniable. Commentators have frequently isolated Shakespeare from his age, and treated him as a natural genius ignorant of the rules or as an alienated Romantic with a vision beyond his time. This is completely to misunderstand the nature of his stature as a dramatist, and the creative milieu which characterized his age. As a dramatist he needed the opportunity to communicate with a responsive audience, and as a writer he needed the stimulating environment of literary creativity. In the public theatres Shakespeare had at hand the raw material for an approach to tragedy uninhibited by classical rules but retaining the essence of the golden age.

Shakespeare’s achievement in tragedy was not the work of an eccentric genius whose natural talent flourished in an undisciplined age, and critical approaches to his work in the genre have often been mistaken in not realizing that he was of his age as well as for all time. From his contemporaries and the opportunities provided in the theatre of his own time, he was able to weave the various strands of the drama into his own rich and varied approach to tragedy. The compelling inevitability of a revenge theme with its dramatic suspense – the theatrical excitement of external action – and, matching this, the subtle insights into character interplay and the exploitation of English blank verse and dramatic prose are all facets of Shakespeare’s mastery of his craft. Experimentation with existing forms and the development of new forms of dramatic structure are characteristic of Shakespeare’s plays from the outset of his career. In tragedy the early Titus Andronicus exploits stage horrors and Senecan revenge, but gives way to lyrical intensity and a Renaissance tour de force with the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet. The fateful passion of love tragedy is brought to new heights in the historical theme of Antony and Cleopatra, and in his English history plays and Roman plays he explores the tragic potential of a central character. The four great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, which belong to the period of Shakespeare’s growing mastery at the turn of the century, do not constitute an exploitation of a successful formula he has at last reached. Each is distinctive in penetrating further depths in tragedy, and their individual nature has often taxed critics who have attempted to encapsulate Shakespearean tragedy in an all-embracing orthodoxy. Hamlet exploits the dramatic possibilities of the revenge theme which was already popular but gives it greater purpose, and develops the stock trait of melancholia in the central character in a way which has fascinated commentators ever since. From the treatment of revenge with its fated prince Shakespeare turns to the domestic tragedy of a non-royal, non-white person in Othello, using a tight-knit dramatic structure which is almost neo-classical. Domestic tragedies had been popularized by other writers, but Shakespeare gives the emotional turmoil of jealousy, the agonizing interplay of ambition and envy, a truly tragic dimension of universal significance. In contrast to the controlled dramatic form of Othello, the loose and episodic structure of the old chronicle history form in King Lear has been viewed by critics as a retrogression in dramatic terms, as perverse and unactable as its central character. Yet other critics have hailed this as Shakespeare’s supreme masterpiece, a dramatic poem unsurpassed in its relentless probing of new reaches in tragedy, with truly epic qualities and imaginative grandeur. The central figure of the singular hero is replaced in Macbeth by the compelling relationship between an ambitious general and his scheming wife in an unholy partnership of murder. As the tragic hero becomes a figure of evil, a Marlovian awareness of the consequences of the central act intensifies the dramatic tension. The dark atmosphere of despair, the exploitation of the supernatural, the overt political theme and plot, give yet a different emphasis to tragedy. Shakespeare’s achievement in tragedy was not the fulfilment of a preconceived design or the response to classical precepts, but a creative exploitation of the opportunities provided by the genre.

NEO-CLASSICAL CRITICISM

Critical approaches to Shakespearean tragedy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were dominated by the theories of neo-classicism. Critics either went to considerable lengths to demonstrate how Shakespeare violated Aristotelian rules, or recognized the force of his accomplishment and sought ways of explaining his success in spite of his lack of conformity with a classical system. The very excesses of the attack by a critic like Thomas Rymer, who castigated Shakespeare in his Short View of Tragedy, indicate the intransigence of the problem of fitting Shakespearean tragedy into a conforming pattern. The familiar Aristotelian precepts are cited: Shakespeare violates the unities, his characters do not sufficiently stress the good and morally uplifting, the death of a Desdemona offends poetic justice, Shakespeare’s language moves from the extremes of high rhetoric to mere quibbling, and he juxtaposes lofty tragedy and lowly comedy. There is a positive side to these attacks: the classical argument encourages close consideration of the texts, critical discussion is rationally sustained, not merely the selection of passages for sentimental praise. That the neo-classical background could foster a more balanced approach is illustrated by the criticism of a far greater critic than Rymer, the dramatist and poet John Dryden.

As a writer Dryden himself came under the influence of the classically aligned French mood of the English restoration period; he wrote plays in the popular form of heroic tragedies in rhyming couplets for much of his career. As a critic he balances theory with creativity, and he has no time for pedantry, disagreeing, in his ‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’, with the rigidity of the French with their ‘servile observation of the unities’. In his own work he eventually abandoned the rhyming couplet, so long regarded as the English equivalent of the French alexandrine, and turned to Shakespeare’s medium of English blank verse for his greatest tragedy, All for Love. In his preface he pays genuine homage to Shakespeare, admits his prejudice that the Elizabethan age was less refined than his own, and makes his own distinctive approach to the tragedy.

Dryden, who died in 1700, was writing from the standpoint of a period which was reacting against the supposed barbarity of the former age. His comments are a valuable touchstone, justifying Dr Johnson’s claim that he was the father of English criticism. He drew heavily on French critical theory, but he develops a sustained critical argument which is essentially open-minded and positive. Dryden’s recognition of Shakespeare’s genius is genuine, although he found it difficult at times to effect a satisfactory compromise between classical theory and Shakespearean practice, particularly in tragedy. Apart from his positive handling of neo-classical theory, Dryden also brings the first-hand knowledge of the theatrical practitioner to his Shakespearean criticism.

THE AGE OF JOHNSON

In the eighteenth century critical approaches to Shakespearean tragedy became essentially literary. It became the practice also to adapt Shakespeare’s plays to bring them into line with classical decorum and what was assumed to be theatrical taste. The great actor-manager David Garrick adapted Shakespeare to both fashionable and popular taste, and his individual control of production and performance established a theatrical practice which continued into the nineteenth century. The literary treatment of Shakespearean tragedy was modelled on the criticism of classical texts, and the establishment and exegesis of texts became ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The development of tragedy
• 2 Critics and Shakespearean tragedy
• 3 Critics and the ‘great’ tragedies
• 4 Later critical texts
• Bibliography