La tragedia

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
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Data:	30.07.2001
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TRAGEDY
a tragedy can be defined as the enactment of the story of a hero and of the calamity and suffering that lead him to his death. Typical features of the Elizabethan tragedy are the following:
1 The hero is a man of high status endowed with moral stature and with an exceptional personality. Sometimes there can be also an heroine in particular in love tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra.
2 The tragic action moves from the hero’s initial error, which can be due to a flaw in his character.
3 The hero’s successive actions finally lead him towards catastrophe, but suffering he achieves selfrecognition, that makes him capable of facing his destiny with courage.
4 Tragic action can be reinforced or enriched by such elements such as: the supernatural ( the witches in Macbeth and the ghost in Hamlet ) and the chance or accident ( the pestilence in Mantua in Romeo and Juliet ).
5 Tragic action may be originated by the presence of an antagonist of the hero, who is called the villain, wich is moved by personal motivations or by a generic impulse to evil ( king Claudius in Hamlet).
6 Tragedy must be able to arouse in the audience pity for hero’s sufferings and fear by his fate.
7 Unlike Greek tragedy, Elizabethan tragedy includes many characters some of whom are low and even comical. That is due to the fact that Shakespeare prefers medioeval drama instead of the classical theatre.
8 Elizabethan tragedy is written in verse, mostly in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameters.
All Shakespeare’s tragedies follow this scheme: 1) The exposition that can be divided in the opening scene which is short and dynamic and a longer one which has the function of telling us about the background. 2) The conflict which represents the rise and the development of the fortunes of the hero up to a critical point called crisis. 3) The catastrophe, which generally coincids with the whole fifth act and enacts the hero’s ruin and with the hero’s final recognition of himself end of the evil he has caused.