Tragedy in its simplest form meant that the protagonist died. Tragedy, then, is basically a serious play involving the down fall of the hero.

Tragedy

ORIGINS

Tragedy (from the Greek "goat song") had its origins in Greek rituals to the god Dionysus (in Greek mythology, originally the god of vegetation, later of revelry and art). Participants dressed themselves as goats (sacred animals) or satyrs (goat-humans) and engaged in dances and prayer-like chants. From these primitive beginnings evolved the poetic dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In his Poetics, the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) explained the fundamental structure and purpose of Greek tragedy as a form of art. During Shakespeare's time, this classical Greek-drama heritage coupled with a medieval-church heritage to produce Elizabethan drama.

CONCEPTS OF TRAGEDY

A.C. Bradley

While a tragedy brings before us a considerable number of persons, it is pre-eminently the story of one person, the hero, or at most two, the hero and heroine. (Only in the love tragedies. Romeo and Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra is the heroine as much the centre of the action as the hero).

The story leads up to and includes the death of the hero. It is essentially a tale of suffering and calamity leading to death.

The suffering and calamity are exceptional, and as a rule unexpected. It is contrasted with previous happiness and glory.

With Shakespeare, tragedy is always concerned with persons of high degree.

SUMMARY: A Shakespearean tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man of high estate. (The abnormal, the supernatural and the element of chance, as they influence action, reduce the element of the tragic).

Therefore, tragedy is the story of human action producing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of a man of high estate.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS IN SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

(a) Man's destiny is not entirely or clearly God-given. There is, therefore, the element of choice.

(b) Disaster to man and/or society is inevitable from that choice ... there is causal connection between character and destiny

(c) Regeneration or renewal follows catastrophe ... (The regeneration involves the hero, society, or the audience/reader singly or jointly)

(d) The death of the hero is the significant moment. There is a ritual element. The hero is a sacrifice. In this sense, therefore, tragedy is a carry-over from primitive drama.

(e) Because we are involved in his fate (whatever his faults, he has established a claim on our heartst and imaginations), we feel:

(i) pride or glory in the accomplishments or potentialities of man, or the intrinsic worth of man.

(ii) the pathos of human suffering, or sense of the needless waste of the good. This has moral implications.

(f) An intensely dramatic situation is required,

(g) The key themes of tragedy are: Justice, time (both as healer and destroyer), pride (hubris), blood (posterity). There are many secondary themes, such as: the killing of a king (regicide); the wicked uncle or advisor; "frailty thy name is woman" and so on.

Macbeth and The Shakespearean Concept of the Tragic Hero

The hero was not simply a man who had an unhappy experience. He was, rather, a renowned and prosperous man, not "pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him, not by vice or depravity but by some error in judgement", an error impelled by a FLAW (tragic flaw) of his character. Very often this flaw is found to be that of hubris the mortal sin of excessive pride. (often the phrase, "Pride goeth before the fall").

The Tragic Hero:

1. The protagonist must be a man of great position and influence in order for the story of his downfall to engage the feelings of ther audience in the deepest possible way. Consequently, the protagonists are always princes, kings generals, or at least members of socially prominent families (as in Romeo and Juliet) so that their downfall affects great populations or nations. The important idea is that tragedy bear universal implications.

2. A tragic hero is a man who is not especially good or virtuous. (the hero is, indeed, human; therefore, he is like us)

3. Tragedy requires that a tragic hero must oppose some conflicting force, either external or internal.

4. The tragic hero does not fall because he has vices (bad habits). He does fall (destroyed), however, because he makes an error in judgement; for example, his inability to "read" people and situations.

5. The tragic hero makes an error in judgement because of a flaw (TRAGIC FLAW) in his character. (In Macbeth's case, it was his vaulting ambition)

6. The tragic hero must fall "heavily enough" (a severe punishment such as death [the death of a tragic hero because of a disease, for example, is not worthy of tragedy] as to instill pity and fear within the onlookers reader/audience). In other words, the tragic hero's suffering must be real; it must never be petty or insignificant.

7. The tragic hero must undergo great mental torment and suffering which causes pity and fear in the reader. The reader must be able to identify with the fallen hero. As he witnesses the slow decline of a potentially good man, he says, "What a waste of potential!".

8. The tragic hero must have the capacity for deep feeling and imagination. His downfall is, therefore, imposing and powerful implying the greatness of human nature.