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Shakespeare's influence on Elizabethan era
The elizabethan drama
Modern And Greek Theatre Differences And Similarity
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First, the Greek tragedy introduces a new type of production. Instead of telling what has already happened, which previous plays had done, the Greeks began to show what may happen. At this point, the plot was quite straightforward. The tragic hero causes his own demise; however, the playwright follows the hero’s downfall with a purging of pity and fear, called catharsis. Centuries later, Elizabethan theatre gained popularity. Shakespeare was the pinnacle of this era; he even invented his own genre of tragedy: the Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Even so, many of his tragedies build upon ideologies founded in Greek theatre. His tragedies also consisted of a tragic hero whose demise brought about a purging of emotions such as pity and fear. Within …show more content…
For instance, how background information is presented and moods are set has transformed between different forms of tragedies. Originally, Greek tragedies utilized Chorus to provide background information or set the tone of the play. In Antigone, the chorus recounted the story of Polonius’s battle and expressed the conflict of Antigone as she debates suicide. However, in Elizabethan tragedies, this chorus was removed, for it was far too unrealistic that a band of people would sing the emotions of the characters. Thus, the playwrights of that period utilized soliloquies to express the inner turmoil of characters. When the character was alone, they would speak to themselves, talking out their thoughts. In Macbeth, Macbeth has a long soliloquy in which he debates killing King Duncan. Yet in modern tragedies, these soliloquies are eliminated. Instead, the actors and the technical aspects of the play set the tone. For example, in the first scene of A Streetcar Named Desire, instead of speaking her thoughts once she’s alone, Blanche “sits in a chair very stiffly...she pours half a tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down” (18). She is completely silent until another character arrives; her body language and actions tell the audience that she’s stressed and has been through quite a bit. She also continuously hides from the light, …show more content…
With the Greeks, while pity and fear were felt for these characters throughout the play, by the end these emotions were purged. The demise of the tragic hero restores order to the play, leaving the audience and other characters relieved, a technique known as catharsis. In Antigone, Creon feels guilt for his ignorance; therefore, the audience feels relieved knowing he will suffer for his mistakes. In Elizabethan tragedies, the same process occurs. In Macbeth, the audience feels pity towards those who Macbeth has killed, and they also fear his greed. Thus, they feel relieved once Macduff kills him and takes the throne, restoring moral order. In modern tragedies; however, the catharsis is not quite as strong due to the complex nature of the ending. There is some relief, because when Kowalski’s remove Blanche from their household, all problems associated with her vanish. Also, because Stella sends her somewhere where she can supposedly get help, the audience can feel relieved. However, the audience still feels fear because Stanley faced no consequences for his immoral actions, and Stella somewhat feels pity towards her sister for sending her away. In the end, Stella wonders, “Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?” (141). She knows in her heart that she is not sending her to a better place, but she has no choice if she wants to preserve the stability of her life. The last few seconds of the play
A Greek drama is a serious of actions within a literary presentation in which the chief character has a disastrous fate. Many Greek dramas fall under theatrical category of a tragedy due to the tragic events and unhappy ending that cause the downfall of the main character. During the famous play “Antigone” the Greek author Sophocles incorporated several features of a tragedy. These features include a morally significant dilemma and the presence of a tragic hero. Grand debate over which character can hold the title of the tragic hero has discussed in the literally world for ages. A tragic hero can be defined as someone with a substantial personality flaw that causes them to endure great suffering with a reversal of character near the end. Antigone possesses certain traits that could potentially render her the tragic hero but Creon truly embodies all characteristics. Creon is the tragic hero in “Antigone” due to several qualities he displays throughout the play; he can’t accept a diminished view of himself, he endures great suffering and he is enlightened in the end.
No, the “English Tragedy” does not relate to the Queen, that is the first fact that should be established. Instead, it is about English, the language itself. George Orwell warned readers of the negative consequences stemming from the degrading quality of English in both 1984 and his essay “Politics and the English Language”. In both pieces of writing, Orwell is able to demonstrate the effects that language can have on the thoughts of those who speak it. In 1984, he is able to emphasize how the lack of language can limit thought, and ultimately society. In “Politics and the English Language”, Orwell demonstrates how bad English will, “construct your sentences for you” (Orwell, 6) and make the language into a meaningless jumble. Although Orwell wrote in the earlier part of the 1900s, the bad English that he wrote about is still relevant today. Dying metaphors, meaningless words, and pretentious diction are still used in writing by the mainstream media despite the warnings of Orwell.
Aristotle thought up a list of compulsory requirements for something to be called ‘tragedy’. He concluded “Tragedy affects through pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions.” meaning that during a tragedy, one should feel the emotions of pity and fear--fear that the circumstances which they are observing could one day affect themselves--but that after the spectacle had ended, one would leave feeling ‘lifted up’, as if they had purged themselves of those emotions. In Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, he stated:
There is something about Shakespeare that entices people to feel venomous towards his work. When reading or viewing adaptations of his work, the audience is compulsively drawn into the story. Especially in his early works, Shakespeare is blatant with violence, which is disturbing to the audience. Yet, the audience is entranced even more as they try to find out how Shakespeare creates his plays to be so tyrannical. Shakespeare is an effective playwright because of one simple fact: he is a tyrant. In plays like Othello and Titus Andronicus, by the control of all characters, Shakespeare uses racism and the treatment of women to entreat and entertain the audience through acts of tyranny until the hero and those with the purest of hearts are destroyed.
Beginning with the Greeks, tragedy has been an essential form of entertainment. Although it has changed slightly over time due to different religious and social values, it is still written and performed to this day. Perhaps the most well known tragedy of all time is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet is perhaps the epitome of all tragedy. Not only does the tragic hero Hamlet meet his demise, but all the main characters in the play at some point due to some flaw in their character, or some fatal decision, also meet the same fate. It is because of their character flaw and/or their fatal decision at some time during the play that their death can be justified.
From the times of Aristotle to modern day Boal people have tried to come up with a definition of tragedy that encompasses all of the works they feel to be tragedies. However, there are always a few exceptions to their rules that make their thesis insubstantial. Those who define tragedies all have different elements that they say are necessary in classifying something as a tragedy. Unfortunately for us, no one definition has ever been settled upon that everyone agrees with. The one factor that does seem to be present in every interpretation of what is necessary in a tragedy is the catharsis that is brought up in the viewer. Without that emotional reaction, whether of pity, empathy, sympathy, or perturbation, a work never seems to be classified as a tragedy. O'Neill wrote Desire Under the Elms borrowing themes from the myths of Phaedra, Medea, and Oedipus. He was trying to create a Greek tragedy in the setting of his time. Racine wrote Phedre in classic Greek style, attempting to create a Greek tragedy that had been written in the modern day. Both of these plays sought to entwine the modern world with Greek tragedies. While they each have distinctly different ways of accomplishing their goal of writing a modern Greek tragedy, they are both tragedies in their own way and bring about the similar effect of Catharsis.
In William Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, many characters moods change throughout. However, the one character whose mood changes most throughout the play is Lady Macbeth. In the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is the one that drives Macbeth into the killing of the king Duncan. She seems confident and determined in the beginning of the play until she is overwhelmed by guilt. Along with this, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s relationship change after the many murders they have performed. Finally, after all the deaths that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth performed, she finally can’t sleep knowing what she finished.
Most readers are aware of the many famous deaths or acts of death within the Shakespearean plays. And when the main characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, indeed, the readers would categorize the play as a tragedy. The problem with any tragedy definition is that most tragic plays do not define the tragedy conditions explained or outlined by Aristotle. According to Telford (1961), a tragedy is a literary work that describes the downfall of an honorable, main character who is involved on historically or socially significant events. The main character, or tragic hero, has a tragic fault, the quality that leads to his or her own destruction. In reading Aristotle’s point of view, a tragedy play is when the main character(s) are under enormous pressure and are incapable to see the dignities in human life, which Aristotle’s ideas of tragedy is based on Oedipus the King. Shakespeare had a different view of tragedy. In fact, Shakespeare believed tragedy is when the hero is simply and solely destroyed. Golden (1984) argued the structure of Shakespearean tragedy would be that individual characters revolved around some pain and misery.
The play Othello is Shakespeare's own version of a classic Greek tragedy. A classical dramatic tragedy derives its essence from the ancient Greek plays that were often popular in Athens. These plays would typically consist of the downfall of a famous Greek character in history/legend, or the breakdown of a hero. Typically the hero is forced to struggle against overwhelming odds, and fate only that this characters downfall would be so imposing that regardless of these forces of nature and fate that destroy him, that he would rise and regain glory due to his moral victory. These tragedies would invoke terror and pity on the audience, in a sense a tragedy could be considered a form of a catharsis, literally cleansing the soul as it is performed, even though the horror typically disturbed audiences, at the same time it cleansed their soul and purified the spirit.
One particular instance where the reader has the potential to feel pity for Macbeth appears in the dialogue immediately before Macbeth decides whether or not to kill King Duncan. Macbeth is unsure of the morality of the murder. During much self-deliberation, he agonizes in the monologue,
Plays are a unique form of entertainment and literature, for they typically include scenes in which characters acknowledge and address the audience directly through various monologues and soliloquies. This adds an extra interactive layer of involvement where the audience can influence a character’s decisions. For instance, in Shakespeare’s Othello, the main character, a wily young man ironically dubbed “honest” Iago stops to tell the audience about his true intentions just as often as he tries to undermine other characters. Naturally, Iago would need some release from his deceitful planning. Therefore, the audience, by silently abiding through Iago’s speeches, must be his sidekicks – albeit unwillingly – the only people Iago trusts and feels
Before the twentieth century plays were mainly written as either a tragedy or comedy. In a tragic play the tragic hero will often do something that will eventually destroy him. In the book Oedipus the King, Oedipus is the tragic hero. In this tragic play the main character, which is portrayed as Oedipus, will do a good deed that will in turn make him a hero. This hero will reach his height of pride in the story, and in the end the action, which he had committed earlier, will return and destroy this man who was once called a hero.
It was common practice for Shakespeare to tell of his tragic hero through the voices of others around his hero. This way we can understand his conflicts, his struggles, and flaws. Usually the hero's own actions and obsessions bring him to his tragic end. (Bradley 2)
The play “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare, involves a character, Lady Macbeth, whose character changes all through the entire play. She was a evil woman. A very manipulative person, whose selfishness was the reason why her character came to a downfall. At the start of the play, Lady Macbeth used her manipulative ways to persuade her husband of murder, convincing him murder was the only option in getting what he wanted. As the play advanced and the murders continued, Lady Macbeth started to wonder if the murders were even relevant. Regretfully, but yet understanding, Lady Macbeth committed suicide from the on going questions that led her to her insanity.
In contemporary theatre, a tragedy generally includes death and destruction, a romance gone horribly wrong, the hero or heroine’s total collapse, or any combination thereof. It puts the audience in a depressed, angry, or at least contemplative mood. In some ways, the Shakespearean tragedy does fit this mold: there is almost always an excess of dead people, and you can usually be sure you won’t laugh the theatre laughing.