XVI.—The Nature of Tragedy

Abstract

The inadequacy of our current literary terms is nowhere clearer than in the case of tragedy, despite the amount of energy that has been spent on efforts to define it. Beyond or below the incontestable examples—the masterpieces of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Shakespeare—stretches a wide and uncertainly bounded territory, sometimes thought of as including almost any play of a fairly serious sort, sometimes divided according as its occupants present, or fail to present, certain accepted features. The former point of view leads to regarding as vaguely tragic even plays that end in no positive catastrophe, the latter to compiling lengthy catalogs of pieces that have nothing of the tragic form but the label. At first sight it may seem that there is a radical difference between plays which end in downfall and death and those in which a threatened woe is at length and completely averted; but if we limit the name of tragedy to the former class, we are forced to deny it to pieces that have traditionally laid claim to it, and thus to show how hard is the task of drawing positive distinctions. If we feel that the Agamemnon of Æschylus is really more akin to Macbeth, than to the bloodless products of a mistakenly classicizing Renaissance, we may yet find it hard to justify that feeling on the basis of the current conceptions, or to account for numerous facts which the actual plays present. Why, for instance, are the best examples of tragedy confined almost entirely to certain well-marked periods—Greek to less than a century between Salamis and the death of Sophocles, Elizabethan either to the seven years between 1586 and the death of Marlowe or to the decade 1599–1609, French to the somewhat longer but far less well filled interval between the Cid in 1636 and Phèdre in 1677? Why, again, are tragic heroes usually of royal or noble rank? “Why is the action usually set in a more or less remote time? Are traits like these essential to the form, or merely adventitious? To answer such questions, we need to examine two matters: the nature of the material best able to yield the tragic effect, the nature of the faculty by which that material is to be contemplated. The present paper—in rather summary fashion, and with no pretence at an exhaustive review of authorities—will attempt this double task.