Tragic Drama Research Articles

Les Plaideurs and the Racinian Canon

When one confronts Les Plaideurs, produced in 1668, and Britannicus, Racine's fourth tragedy given the following year, numerous striking parallels emerge to suggest that Racine either approached the comic plot of the Wasps of Aristophanes, the source for his one comedy, and Tacitus' potentially tragic account of the death of Britannicus with some of the same themes, or that he reworked some themes from the comedy while writing Britannicus. We do not know exactly when either Les Plaideurs or Britannicus was written; it is not impossible, however, that the tragedy was conceived shortly after the successful production of Andromaque late in 1667. It would have been appropriate both for Racine to compose another work in the same vein and for the Hotel de Bourgogne to encourage him. If Racine began Britannicus, intending it for production in 1668, he must have soon put it aside, perhaps drawing up a prose sketch, like the one extant for an Iphigenie en Tauride,1 and composing some verses. Suddenly, the time may not have seemed ripe for another tragic drama. In the quarrel over Andromaque and general hostilities between the Moliere-Corneille camp and Racine and the HoItel de Bourgogne, perhaps a tragic drama might fail. Racine's career depended on his ability to follow up the success of Andromaque; he could not risk a failure in tragedy. Perhaps Racine decided to bide his time, amusing himself with a fascinating experiment to divertir et faire rire with themes that were intended to plaire et toucher. In

Towards a Definition of Calderonian Tragedy

It is generally considered that Spain has made no significant and original contribution to tragic drama. The belief is in fact prevalent that the Spanish drama possesses no real tragedies. This is often explicitly stated in general histories of the European theatre. In particular studies of Tragedy it is explicitly stated, for instance, in Herbert Muller's The Spirit of Tragedy, where there are separate sections on the tragedy of the Greeks, of the Elizabethans, of the French and of modern times, and where the Spanish drama is dismissed in eighteen lines, among which we find this statement: “For Spain remained orthodox, Catholic, hierarchical; and Spain wrote no tragedy. Its greatest dramatist, Calderon, presented some nominally tragic actions but always arrived at a pious or patriotic conclusion, resounding with devotion to God, king or country.”

Tragic History and Aristotle's School

The term ‘tragic history’ was coined in the 1890's by Eduard Schwartz. It was supposed to denote a certain Hellenistic type of historical writing with a twofold inspiration—tragic drama, for its scale, arrangement, and emotion, and literary criticism of the Peripatetic persuasion, for certain theoretical assumptions. The term was vague in the extreme, and being applied to works of writers no longer extant—from Duris to Posidonius—could not well be otherwise. Nor was it possible to prove, or else disprove, the alleged relevance of the critical works of the Peripatetic school, for there is no information on Theophrastus'De historia, and very little on Praxiphanes' work with the same title; and the master himself, Aristotle, seems to deprecate the course of action which his school is said to have commended. Vagueness and unfounded assertions remained awkward features of most subsequent discussions, whether they accepted Schwartz's original submission or not. In two recent papers F. W. Walbank has sought to break the spell. His result is radical: discard the term ‘tragic history’ altogether. This is not yet proven; but he has done much to rid the argument of mis-leading assumptions. In that process, however, he has perhaps discarded too much and, I think, has slightly mis-stated the most important piece of evidence we have—if tragic history is supposed to have a peripatetic nuance. Aristotle'sPoeticsis the only piece of evidence of which the context is known. But the context is notoriously difficult and the following remarks are concerned with these difficulties.

The Dates and Order of Chapman's Tragedies

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Dates and Order of Chapman's TragediesElias SchwartzElias Schwartz Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 57, Number 2Nov., 1959 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/389304 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1959 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Catiline and the Nature of Jonson's Tragic Fable

Although the principal subject of this paper is Ben Jonson's second tragedy, Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), a good deal of what I have to say is equally applicable to his earlier and somewhat more ambitious Sejanus His Fall (1603). The two plays are alike in many ways. For one thing, neither of them has ever been popular. Even among professed admirers, very few have been willing to praise them as highly as Jonson thought they deserved to be praised, and fewer still have seen any genuine tragedy in them. In fact, most criticism, favorable as well as unfavorable, has centered on such interesting but essentially peripheral matters as Jonson's use of the Senecan ghost and chorus (in Catiline), his portrayal of character, his reconstruction of the Roman scene, and, of course, his rhetoric. Discussions of Jonson's plots have scarcely gone beyond the problem of identifying his sources, and almost no one has touched upon the question of whether any real importance attaches to the use he made of those sources. This would not be particularly surprising, perhaps, if we were dealing with some competent journeyman, like Thomas Heywood for example, whose selection and use of sources is a matter of mainly academic interest; but in Jonson we have a playwright who not only aimed at something more than a popularly successful play but also set unusually great store by authenticity of fable—or “truth of argument,” as he called it—where tragedy was concerned (Works, IV, 350). His manipulation of material, therefore, especially at points where the disagreement of authoritative sources about a major issue forced him to make a choice, becomes a matter of considerable interest. It is certainly of interest to the historian, for it shows the sort of interpretation of history an intelligent and well-informed classical student of the seventeenth century might reasonably hold. My point, however, is that it is also a matter of literary interest. It can be shown, I think, that Jonson's ordering of his fable, rightly understood, gives the clue to why and how he expected these plays to be judged as tragedies rather than merely as serious history plays. In other words, it lets one see the conception of tragic drama that he worked by.

Ovid's ‘Lucretia’

Every country has its heroes, legendary or historical, who are remembered for some noble action that has caught the popular imagination and made their names immortal. Among the Romans, just as Fabricius was the type of incorruptibility, Decius Mus of devotion to country, Regulus of faith to the pledged word, so the name of Lucretia was proverbial for chastity. The story of her suicide after she had been violated by Sextus Tarquin is recounted by the historians Livy, Dionysius, and Diodorus, and alluded to by many Roman poets and prose-writers. But apart from such allusions, it is curious that of all the Roman poets whose works have come down to us none save Ovid has treated her story at any length; moreover, there is apparently no representation of her among the extant remains of Roman art. To painters and poets of later times, however, she made a strong appeal. In the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, for example, there is the famous painting by Titian; and in our own literature Chaucer sang the praise of ‘the verray wyf, the verray trewe Lucresse’ in his Legend of Good Women, Gower included her in the seventh book of his Confessio Amantis, Shakespeare in his youth composed that highly coloured arabesque The Rape of Lucrece, Thomas Heywood turned the story into a tragic drama, and most recently Benjamin Britten has made it the subject of an opera.That Ovid found in Lucretia an attractive figure is evident from the detailed manner in which he treats her story in the second book of his Fasti.

Studies in Character Agamemnon

The more I study Aeschylus the more clearly I perceive how much he tells us of his characters. The exhibition of character is not his main purpose, and he spends less space upon it than Sophocles or Euripides, not to mention more modern dramatists, but his touches are so sure that the final picture is surprisingly complete. In one case this is generally admitted. Few will dispute that Clytaemnestra is one of the most vivid and striking figures in all tragic drama. But she is an exception, and Aeschylus shows her to us more fully than any of his figures except the still enigmatic Prometheus. (Eteocles in the Septem makes as many speeches as Clytaemnestra, but they are less revealing.) In most of his plays the speeches allotted to the characters are so scanty, and so much dictated by the requirements of the action, that one has to know the play very well before one perceives how much the spare touches of character reveal. That point was only impressed on me when I started to learn the Agamemnon by heart. Then I really grasped it and will try to illustrate it.Agamemnon himself is the best illustration to begin with, for he is less complex than his wife. He conforms to a well-known type, which most of us have met. He combines an imposing façade with inner weakness. Aeschylus, it is true, does not directly mention his appearance. That we learn from Homer (Iliad iii. 166 f.); and it is noteworthy how close Aeschylus keeps to Homer in depicting Agamemnon.

Tragic Drama and the Problem of Evil

Tragic Drama and the Problem of Evil

A Study in the ‘Medea’

Euripides’ reputation has often suffered from a comparison of his works with those on similar subjects by Aeschylus and Sophocles. In such a comparison Euripides stands at a disadvantage, since it involves comparing what are acknowledged to be his lesser plays with the masterpieces of the two earlier tragedians, while no plays are extant by his predecessors on the same subjects as his greatest plays. To take as an example one of Euripides’ acknowledged masterpieces, the Medea, the only Greek works we still possess in which Medea is a prominent figure are one of Pindar's Odes and Apollonius Rhodius’ epic, the Argonautica, both of which deal with an earlier phase of the legend; while for plays dealing with the same incidents we must turn to those of a Roman dramatist, Seneca, and a French dramatist, Corneille. In comparing Euripides’ Médea with the plays of these two dramatists we give Euripides an advantage which is possibly greater than that which Aeschylus and Sophocles have in a comparison of their works with his; for tragic drama was not a branch of literature in which the Romans excelled and the Médée is admittedly not one of Corneille's successes. Nevertheless, even a hurried reading of their plays is of value in helping us to appreciate Euripides’ Medea, since salient points of that play stand out by contrast in bolder relief.Such a comparison impresses upon us two important aspects of Euripides’ play: first, that he reduced the magical element, itself an essential part of the story, to the barest minimum, and second, that he alone feels sympathy with Medea herself.

Trisyllabic Feet in the Dialogue of Aeschylus

In R. C. Flickinger's ‘Greek Theater and its Drama’ (3rd ed. second impression 1929) we read on pp. 171–2, ‘In the iambic trimeters written by Aeschylus a trisyllabic substitution (tribrach, anapaest or dactyl) for the pure disyllabic iambus occurs only once in about twenty-five verses.’ A similar statement is found in other earlier writers, e.g. Haigh (‘Tragic Drama of the Greeks’ 1896 p. 372). The authors of the error appear to have been Rossbach and Westphal, who are quoted with approval by J. Rumpel (Philologus XXIV (1866) p. 407), and subsequently repudiated by him (Phil. XXV (1867) p. 54). When Rumpel found that he had been misled, he counted for himself the trimeters and the trisyllabic feet in Aeschylus, but his results are of dubious value owing to the fact that he counts as ‘trimeters’ lines like;δαίμονά τε τὰν ἂμαχον ἀπόλεμον ἀνίερον (Ag. 769) andαὐτοϕόνα δίμορα τέλεα τάδε πάθη. τί ϕῶ; (Sept. 850).

Forensic Chemistry and Scientific Criminal Investigation

“FORENSIC CHEMISTRY” is not a very intriguing title but, interpreted in the generous spirit of the author of this work, it covers a varied range of phenomena, and it is certainly interlinked with some of the most tragic dramas of the century. The book may be considered under two aspects. It is primarily a textbook for the expert witness, or for him who would aspire to reach that third and highest plane. For him Mr. Lucas gives clear and meticulously careful advice on the manner of preparation of a report, and macroscopical, microscopical and general and special analytical methods are described which cover almost every happening in the annals of crime. The help that physical science may give is not forgotten, and X-rays, ultra-violet and infra-red photography, and methods for the determination of specific gravities and refractive indices are all pressed into service.

Plot and Character in Sophocles

Aristotle'sPoetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

Plot and Character in Sophocles

Aristotle's Poetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

The Shifting of Responsibility in XVIIth Century French Tragic Drama

The Shifting of Responsibility in XVIIth Century French Tragic Drama

Destiny in Chaucer's Troilus

Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is a tragedy, strongly deterministic in tone, the action of which is presided over by a complex and inescapable destiny. Professor Kittredge has already given an excellent exposition of the fate which hangs over the chief characters and over the doomed city of Troy, and has analyzed the sources of the feeling that we are “looking on at a tragedy that we are powerless to check or to avert.” And Professor Root, remarking upon the high seriousness and the moral import of Chaucer's poem, says:He has called Troilus a tragedy; and it is a tragedy in the mediæval sense of the term—the story of a man cast down by adverse fortune from great prosperity and high estate into misery and wretchedness. The five books into which he has disposed his story suggests the five acts of the tragic drama. There is, moreover, a quite tragic insistence on the idea of destiny.

Mr. Hardy's Dynasts as Tragic Drama

Mr. Hardy's Dynasts as Tragic Drama

Types of Tragic Drama. C. E. Vaughan

<i>Types of Tragic Drama</i>. C. E. Vaughan

Types of Tragic Drama

Types of Tragic Drama

Haigh's Tragic Drama of the Greeks - The Tragic Drama of the Greeks. By A. E. Haigh, M.A. With illustrations. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1896. Pp. 499. 12s. 6d.

Haigh's Tragic Drama of the Greeks - The Tragic Drama of the Greeks. By A. E. Haigh, M.A. With illustrations. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1896. Pp. 499. 12<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>.

Sophoclean Trilogy

The Greek dramatist of the best age, as we read on unquestionable authority, was wont to produce his tragedies in sets of three together—in trilogies; the addition to such a set of a comic—a so-called satyric play—completed a tetralogy, a combination of four arguments. It is much if we have in the Cyclops of Euripides a single example of a satyric drama. Among the numerous tragedies that have survived, with the exception of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, consisting of the three tragedies, Agamemnon, the Choephori, the Eumenides, not a single certified trilogy has come down to us complete. The satyric drama that belonged to this was entitled Proteus, but the name only has been preserved. Its argument and bearing on the original artistic whole are too absolutely matters of conjecture not to remain matters of ardent dispute. The Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus is a single play remaining out of a tetralogy of which the titles are preserved:—Laius, Oedipus, Seven against Thebes, Sphinx; titles from which it is clear that the subjects of this set—the Oedipodeia—followed on in sequence and connection as intimate as the preserved tragedies of the Oresteia. Such may also easily have been the case between a pair of dramas, the Edonae and Bassarides, which are recorded as pertaining to the trilogy of the Lycurgeia; and a Prometheus Unbound supplied originally the proper sequel of the Prometheus Bound that is preserved. Nor is such sequence absent virtually from the tetralogy of the Persica to which the preserved play of the Persae belongs, comprising in order; Phineus, Persae, Glaucus Potnieus, Prometheus purphoros, though it is effected in a manner abnormal and recondite. In my Age of Pericles I have set forth in detail the reference of the three successive tragic dramas to the great victories of Artemisium, Salamis and Plataea, and of the concluding satyric play to the sequel of those victories in the restoration of civil life and the arts of culture. The action of the Persae however, alone, is on proper historical basis; the other combined subjects become significant and are justified in their relation to it, on the strength of accepted poetical and mythical associations.