The myth of Eurydice is a sad story in which two lovers are separated by death. After his love dies, Orpheus journeys into the underworld to retrieve her, but instead loses her for good. Playwright Sarah Ruhl takes the myth of Eurydice and attempts to transform this sad tale into a more light-hearted story. However, despite humorous lines and actions throughout the play, the melancholy situation of the actual tale overwhelms any comicality present. Although meant to be funny, Sarah Ruhl's “Eurydice” can be seen as a modernized tragedy about two lovers who are separated forever by a twist of fate.
As the play begins, the dialogue between Orpheus and Eurydice reveals that the two are definitely very affectionate toward each other. As Orpheus explains his song he has written for Eurydice, he tells her, “your hair will be my orchestra and – I love you.” It is apparent that the two are very fond of one another and wish to spend every moment in each other's arms. However, their love is not perfect; Orpheus appears to value his music more than his lover. When asked what he is thinking about, Orpheus simply replies “music.” He is constantly thinking of music, hearing music, writing music. He once tells Eurydice he is thinking of her, but shortly after admits, “and music.” Eurydice is not oblivious to Orpheus's love for music, and this sometimes upsets her. The first scene shows how different the two characters really are; Orpheus loves music while Eurydice enjoys reading books. However, they are still madly in love with one another. The opening scenes of the play set a beautiful stage for an imminent tragedy.
In scene two the audience is introduced to the father of Eurydice. His monologue informs the audience that ...
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...ou.” This is the same exact wording Orpheus used in his letter to Eurydice. It appears that Eurydice will finally move on and accept the child, the king of the underworld, as her new husband. However, Orpheus will not give up so easily; this is strange because in the opening scene of the play it appears that Eurydice loves him more than he loves her. As Orpheus realizes Eurydice will never be able to return to the real world, he decides to kill himself in order to be with her. This is not directly stated but implied; the stage directions read, “Orpheus appears in the elevator. He sees Eurydice.” Orpheus is happy at this point, but not for long. “The elevator starts raining on Orpheus,” and he forgets everything. The irony of this ending leaves the audience feeling almost heartbroken and sympathetic for the couple, for they will never live happily ever after.
Throughout literature authors have written to express a message to their intended audience. This is no exception for the plays, Oedipus Rex and Darker Face of the Earth, written by Sophocles and Rita Dove, respectively. The similarities in plot, characters, and motifs are not the sole concurrencies between both plays; the overall message to the audiences in both plays is one in the same, one cannot escape their fate. Sophocles and Dove both illuminate this message through their use of the chorus. While Sophocles uses a single chorus of Theban elders, Dove illustrates the grimness of fate through several minor characters: the chorus, the prayers and the players, the rebels, and three female slaves. Dove’s usage of Phebe, Diana, and Psyche further accentuate the battle between free will and fate, as well as the role of women, a concept absent in Sophocles’ play.
There are many tragedies to be found in literature, but only a few are like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is a story of forbidden love in which a young couple are torn apart by their families’ feud in Renaissance Italy; the play’s tragic ending has both main characters die. Many aspects of this play have sparked a heated debate: is Romeo and Juliet a tragedy or is it simply tragic? Some critics claim that the play lacks elements that are necessary for a tragedy. Yet Aristotle explicitly states the essential components of a tragedy in his Poetics, and Romeo and Juliet meets those requirements. Romeo and Juliet can be considered an Aristotelian tragedy because of Romeo’s impetuousness, Juliet’s loyalty to Romeo, and the play’s peripeteia.
In the play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, a quintessential pair of teens fall in love, but their fate ends in misfortune. The pair falls in love in a time where women are seen as unimportant and insignificant. In spite of this, Romeo breaks the boundaries of male dominance and shows a more feminine side. Throughout the play, there is an interesting depiction of gender roles that is contrary to the society of the time period.
The tradition of the tragedy, the renowned form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has principally become a discontinued art. Plays that evoke the sense of tragedy-the creations of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare-have not been recreated often, nor recently due to its complex nature. The complexity of the tragedy is due to the plot being the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. While the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero is still immensely important because of the need to have a medium of suffering, who tries to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and the sudden downturn in the hero’s fortunes. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the modern tragedy of a common man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, exhibits some qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character Willy Loman should not be considered a full-on tragic hero because, he although bears a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his own personal dignity, he is unlike a true tragic hero, like Oedipus, because he was in full control of his fate where Oedipus was not.
During the Ancient Grecian time periods, tragedy meant death because one defied against an outer prophecy. Modern day tragedy was simply realism, the unspoken way of life. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Ibsen's A Doll's House, the main characters - Nora and Oedipus, are both constructed to illustrate flaws in society and how naive people are. Ibsen and Sophocles both developed tragedy into a central idea that all people surreptitiously understand. Nora and Oedipus make incompetent decisions that assist in discovering their fundamental nature as tragic heroes and provoke sorrow and pity among the audience.
In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the two get married but Eurydice quickly perishes. Overcome with grief Orpheus convinces Hades to let him bring back Eurydice to the world of the living. He agrees but on one condition; Eurydice has to walk behind Orpheus and he cannot look back to see if she's following. Orpheus agrees, but when the couple are just about to leave Erebus, Orpheus looks back to see his lover. With a final "Farewell" Eurydice
The great Sophoclean play, Oedipus Rex is an amazing play, and one of the first of its time to accurately portray the common tragic hero. Written in the time of ancient Greece, Sophocles perfected the use of character flaws in Greek drama with Oedipus Rex. Using Oedipus as his tragic hero, Sophocles’ plays forced the audience to experience a catharsis of emotions. Sophocles showed the play-watchers Oedipus’s life in the beginning as a “privileged, exalted [person] who [earned his] high repute and status by…intelligence.” Then, the great playwright reached in and violently pulled out the audience’s most sorrowful emotions, pity and fear, in showing Oedipus’s “crushing fall” from greatness.
It is universally acknowledged that William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is regarded as the most famous tragic love story in English literature (Weis, 1). The play outlines the story of ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers’ (1.Prologue.6); Romeo and Juliet, which fall in a love that totally consumes them and results in their tragic death. Consequently, love is regarded as the most dominant and significant theme, as it is the motive supporting Romeo and Juliet’s actions throughout the play. The love presented between Romeo and Juliet can be criticised and interpreted differently. A majority of the audience perceives the love as brave and courageous as it challenges the traditions of its time, the Elizabethan Era (Weis, 18). It is naturally accepted as an idealistic love, longing for perfection that causes its own destruction. However, some argue that the love between the main characters is superficial, solely based on lust and physical desire (Belsey, 127). This essay will firstly discuss how Shakespeare challenged societal conventions through the concept of love in the play. Additionally, it will explore the opposing views regarding the love portrayed by examining both, Romeo and Juliet’s idea of love, in which Shakespeare effectively presented through his use of language and technique. Lastly, this essay will study the power of the forbidden love between the main characters and highlight its consequences.
He curses the murderer of the previous king, Laius, whom Oedipus killed not knowing he has both the king and his father. This is a good example of dramatic irony in the play, as he starts by curing the murderer, who is himself, then continues to curse himself in case that the murderer is someone within the walls of his palace. In the end, he places a curse on himself, which said curse will take effect towards the end of this play.
Sophocles uses a mixture of both visual and emotional imagery to create the morally questioning, Greek tragedy ‘Oedipus Tyrannos’. He presents the audience with an intense drama, which addresses the reality and importance of the gods that the Greeks fervently believed in. The play also forces the audience to ask themselves if there is such a concept as fate.
The play "Oedipus Rex" is a very full and lively one to say the least. Everything a reader could ask for is included in this play. There is excitement, suspense, happiness, sorrow, and much more. Truth is the main theme of the play. Oedipus cannot accept the truth as it comes to him or even where it comes from. He is blinded in his own life, trying to ignore the truth of his life. Oedipus will find out that truth is rock solid. The story is mainly about a young man named Oedipus who is trying to find out more knowledge than he can handle. The story starts off by telling us that Oedipus has seen his moira, his fate, and finds out that in the future he will end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Thinking that his mother and father were Polybos and Merope, the only parents he knew, he ran away from home and went far away so he could change his fate and not end up harming his family. Oedipus will later find out that he cannot change fate because he has no control over it, only the God's can control what happens. Oedipus is a very healthy person with a strong willed mind who will never give up until he gets what he wants. Unfortunately, in this story these will not be good trait to have.
Greek tragedies, written in ancient times, are still a standard for tragedies written today. Contrary to diminishing in value over time, these tragedies have become cherished pieces of work in the sophisticated literate culture of today. However, one can not delve into these precious works of beautiful literary verse without first having background knowledge of the context they were written, and of the structure they follow. There are several terms, as well as an analysis of tragedies by Aristotle, a philosopher who experienced them firsthand. By knowing the structural basis of tragic works before reading them, one is able to better understand them and appreciate them more fully for the prized trophies of classic literature they are.
The characters in the movie, Black Orpheus, are significantly altered from the Greek myth. In the myth, Orpheus and Eurydice are together from the beginning and are completely in love. Everyone is happy for their love and the only thing that stands in their way is death. In the movie, however, this is notably changed. Orpheus begins as a streetcar conductor that was engaged to Mira, giving the idea that Orpheus was in love with another woman. We quickly see that this is not the case as Orpheus is always very curt and rude with his fiancée. They are slated to get married, but there is an eerie feeling in the air that something is about to go wrong.
The plot of the play revolves around Oedipus during his young age; when he was young he is shown to have raped a girl who then committed suicide due to the shame. In this case, he is shown to have attracted a curse since at young age; he was blinded to sacred laws of hospitality. The king Lauis and Queen of Thebes decides to kill the infant Oedipus; but the person sent to kill hesitates to do so. Other than killing him, the servant sent takes him to the mountain to die out of exposure (Brown 254). Instead of dying out of exposure, he is rescued by a shepherd who takes him to Corinth and he is raised as a childless king. Having the knowledge of the fact that he is not the biol...
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Orpheus (Greek Mythology)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.