Tragedy is a dramatic genre wherein which the hero struggles in the face of a great trial only to be defeated in the end. The defeat, however, is seen as a triumph instead of a loss since the focus should be on the quality of the struggle not the end, and the purpose of a successful tragedy is to touch the audience and make them empathize with the central character’s fall into despair or death.
Aristotle defines classical Greek tragedy in his work Poetics. According to him, a tragedy should, first of all, be a serious and complex piece. Every element of the drama, from plot to character to language, must adhere to this quality of stateliness or grandness. The play should also elicit fear and pity among the audiences because only when these are achieved does the play effectively achieves catharsis, another important element of a tragedy according to Aristotle. Catharsis happens when the audience identities with the hero’s failure and in the process, purifying and releasing the audience’s own fears and pity.
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To further enhance this singular effect, Aristotle recommends that the plot should only take place in a single day. Finally, the downfall of the hero should be brought about by a mistake of some sort—something that is beyond the control of the tragic hero.
Like the classical tragedies, William Shakespeare’s tragic plays also employ the same grandness and seriousness in language, plot and characters. However, Shakespeare’s tragedies have jesters in them to provide comic (though still profound) relief and the plot take place in days or months, with every act representing an episode. Sometimes he has multiple actions happening in different places at the same time.
Another is that the tragic Shakespearean hero is himself responsible for his tragic end although there is always the premonition since the first act that whatever the hero does, he is fated to die in the end. Shakespeare’s skill in character development makes eliciting catharsis very effective. Classical tragedy emphasizes action to affect the audience but Shakespeare uses powerful soliloquies more than action.
A tragic hero is one who experiences a reversal of fortune, usually from good to bad. The downfall is brought about by a mistake not an immoral act or a conscious effort to fight with society. He is thrown into a situation that he does not expect yet he will struggle stubbornly and vigorously to rise above it. It could be a fight against fate or the will of the gods or authorities like the king or church. To make the fall more pronounced and elicit empathy tragic heroes are kings, princes, or persons of rank and their fall is sudden and deep, not through something slow as disease, poverty or vice.
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Of the famous literary characters in tragedies, Hamlet stands out as the best exemplification of the tragic hero, both in the classical and Renaissance sense of the term. Hamlet is a prince. He is very intelligent, proud and honorable. To contemplate killing his uncle is against the values he grew up with so that he is torn between doing something socially unacceptable to obeying the request of his father’s ghost.
His actions through out the play are the results of deep internal struggles revealed through his soliloquies. Although it veers from Aristotle’s definition of tragedy as to be plot-driven, Hamlet’s troubled emotions and hesitations expressed in Shakespeare’s exquisite language effectively make the audience identify with the character thus eliciting the cathartic effect that is a primary ingredient in a good tragedy.