The best Shakespearean tragedy?
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CalvinandHodges
Puritan Board Junior
Hi:
There is the old saying that in Shakespeare a tradegy is where everyone dies, and a comedy is where everyone lives!
Hamlet is considered his best tradegy because of the psychological tension, court intrigue, use of language, and the question as to the guilt or innocense of Hamlet's uncle is never fully resolved. How much more tradgic would the play be if the uncle was truly innocent!
Iago's scheming in Othello makes the play worthwile, but the foolishness and stupidity of Othello is what drives the tradegy. I was not impressed.
Macbeth was a brute who loved his wife beyond common sense. It was Shakespeare's bloodiest play, and I think that is about all that recommended it. The way he worked out the "prophecy" concerning "Birnum Wood do come to Dunsumay" (SP?) was rather lame.
Grace,
-CH
There is the old saying that in Shakespeare a tradegy is where everyone dies, and a comedy is where everyone lives!
Hamlet is considered his best tradegy because of the psychological tension, court intrigue, use of language, and the question as to the guilt or innocense of Hamlet's uncle is never fully resolved. How much more tradgic would the play be if the uncle was truly innocent!
Iago's scheming in Othello makes the play worthwile, but the foolishness and stupidity of Othello is what drives the tradegy. I was not impressed.
Macbeth was a brute who loved his wife beyond common sense. It was Shakespeare's bloodiest play, and I think that is about all that recommended it. The way he worked out the "prophecy" concerning "Birnum Wood do come to Dunsumay" (SP?) was rather lame.
Grace,
-CH
SRoper
Puritan Board Graduate
Is not Titus Andronicus Shakespeare's bloodiest play?
weinhold
Puritan Board Freshman
A few brief comments:
1. Richard, I hope that by this:
2. I saw Titus Andronicus mentioned a few times. Yes, it is certainly Shakespeare's bloodiest play, but also one of his earliest. Most critics agree that it lacks the gravitas of his later works.
3. I haven't voted yet. I'm torn between Hamlet and Lear. I guess it depends on which one i've read or viewed lately.
By the way, how do we define tragedy? Perhaps this poll might lead us into such a question, which I'll post on a different thread a bit later.
1. Richard, I hope that by this:
you meant that the tragedy was your wasting time, and not your studying Shakespeare.Shakespeare's best tragedy is the time I wasted studying him for English literature
2. I saw Titus Andronicus mentioned a few times. Yes, it is certainly Shakespeare's bloodiest play, but also one of his earliest. Most critics agree that it lacks the gravitas of his later works.
3. I haven't voted yet. I'm torn between Hamlet and Lear. I guess it depends on which one i've read or viewed lately.
By the way, how do we define tragedy? Perhaps this poll might lead us into such a question, which I'll post on a different thread a bit later.
I meant that studying Shakespeare is a waste of time and torture. I am not a fan of the baird
I'm not sure that we can rank Shakespeare's tragedies, since each one offers something different. It is the most viscerally horrifying of Shakespeare's plays; but that doesn't make it his best (though it doesn't make it not his best, either). And of course many of the historical plays have tragic elements in them. I think as far as intensity of appeal through visual imagery go, Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece predominate.
weinhold
Puritan Board Freshman
I meant that studying Shakespeare is a waste of time and torture. I am not a fan of the baird
It's too bad you are not a fan of the bard. I hope you at least appreciate his contribution to the English language, and to drama and poetry as well. He's the greatest English poet and playwright. Perhaps someday you will have the joy of experiencing him anew. If the classroom didn't do it for you, try just picking up one of the many great Shakespeare films available at your local video store. Much Ado About Nothing directed by Kenneth Branaugh, for example.
PW
weinhold
Puritan Board Freshman
Sure, it's a conventional and hypothetical exercise. At least we're talking a little Shakespeare though, right? You mentioned "viscerally horrifying" and "appeal through visual imagery," but are these really elements of the tragic? Wouldn't we have to say film (or even opera) outdoes Shakespeare in this regard? But such spectacles seem, to me at least, fairly kitsch when compared to Shakespeare. Likewise, Titus and Lucrece don't really compare with the four great tragedies.
PW
They are not necessary elements of the tragic. I don't think most opera libretti have a whole lot of visual imagery --and I don't think that film really qualifies here, because I was speaking of visual imagery through words: Shakespeare makes you see in those two works. The point of my posting is that you have to specify wherein the comparison lies, in order to say that this or that is superior. And since Shakespeare doesn't seem to me to repeat himself in any of his compositions (taking the sonnets as a sequence, naturally), the point of comparison needs to be made more precise. This is why I can't vote on the poll yet: it's not clear to me what "better" is supposed to mean.
weinhold
Puritan Board Freshman
Ruben, now I see what you mean. Thanks for clarifying. Your desire for a qualitative definition is apt, but I'm afraid I'll need some help providing you with an answer as there are a number of possible options. Perhaps that's why I left the question as vague as I did. Upon thinking about the potentialities, I suppose that I would have us focus upon the tragic. Which play is most tragic? This question clearly forces us to define tragedy, which is an exercise that would be rewarding for us. Aristotle helps us define tragedy in The Poetics, Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, and one of my professors, Louise Cowan, in The Tragic Abyss. Aristotle's formula tends to provide a starting point for thinking about tragedy. He asserts that Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is the ideal tragedy, because of 1) its inevitably progressing and cohesive plot, with a beginning, middle, and end; 2) the anagnoresis that allows Oedipus to realize his own hamartia; and 3) the cathartic effect of the drama. Perhaps there are other important observations that Aristotle makes which I am missing. Anyway, I hope that gets us started towards defining the tragic. I'll post more from Louise Cowan in a separate thread.
So which of these four tragedies by Shakespeare is the most tragic?
OK, within those three criteria (although catharsis is hard to quantify), I'm torn between Hamlet and Lear. The plot of Hamlet strikes me as being more inevitable; but although Hamlet is remarkably self aware in some things (resolution's native hue being sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought) it does not seem to me so clear that he realizes his fault as Lear does.
Ruben,
I'll help. The answer is Lear.
The order is:- Lear
- Hamlet
- Macbeth
- Julius Caesar
- Othello
- Romeo and Juliet
As for understanding tragedy in general, the best place to start is with is Aristotle's Poetics.
SRoper
Puritan Board Graduate
I meant that studying Shakespeare is a waste of time and torture. I am not a fan of the baird
You're in good company. JRR Tolkien did not like Shakespeare either.
I am familiar with Aristotle's poetics (women are, perhaps, rather bad than good), and I can sympathize with your location of Lear. I wouldn't follow your whole list, though. What do you like so much about Macbeth?
Yes, I ran into a girl who wanted to be a high-school English teacher. She had read, she thought, 3 of Shakespeare's plays --Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet and I forget what the other one that she said was. She'd never heard of Swift's Modest Proposal.
Yes, I ran into a girl who wanted to be a high-school English teacher. She had read, she thought, 3 of Shakespeare's plays --Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet and I forget what the other one that she said was. She'd never heard of Swift's Modest Proposal.
Macbeth is a classic example of hubris. In a way, Macbeth is the prototypical modern man - competent and loyal at first, he is driven to extremes by a nagging wife, sure that he deserves more than he has, and just as sure that everyone else needs to give way to him so he can get it.
Shakespeare is the opposite of Dashall Hamet detective stories: those stories have great plot and wooden, unbelievable characters. Shakespeare does not always have the best (or even original) plots, but his characters and drama are second to none.
We are a lost generation. Think of how many Shakespearean lines you used to be able to just start in order to make a point:
"I could bound myself in a nutshell..."
"There is a divinity that shapes our ends..."
"[FONT="]Let me have men about me that are fat"
"[/FONT]But, woe the while! our fathers’ minds are dead, [FONT="]And we are govern’d with our mothers’ spirits"
"Out, Out, damned spot!"
I could go on and on and on...
[/FONT]
LadyFlynt
Puritan Board Doctor
Sad and true.
I discovered Shakepeare in 6th grade. The public library had a collection of his works in small, blue clothbounds. I was sorely disappointed in highschool to have to sit through a chopped up snippet of Julius Ceasar and another go round of Romeo and Juliet. There were so much more interesting plays of his and in their entirety is the only way to read them.
I must admit that the battle of the sexes were what had me enjoying them the most...and the ironies...
LadyFlynt
Puritan Board Doctor
Thank you for mentioning this; the name sounded familiar. I went through my schoolbooks and found that I had acquired this at a yard sale somewhere, "Aristotle on Poetry and Style"...inside it says, "The Poetics". Guess, I'll have to start reading.
JonathanHunt
Puritan Board Senior
Away from the tragedies (I voted for the Scottish play), my favourite is Twelfth Night.
Why Macbeth? It is dark from the very first moment. The imagery is so rich... yada yada. And, for me, it has more 'stand-out' moments, characters and lines.
JH
Why Macbeth? It is dark from the very first moment. The imagery is so rich... yada yada. And, for me, it has more 'stand-out' moments, characters and lines.
JH
MrMerlin777
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps at this petty pace from day to day to the last sylable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools their way to dusty death. Out! Out brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Tis a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Macbeth's soliliquy (more or less, don't think I've got all of the punctuation correct)
I had to memorize this in my senior year of highschool. That was 21 years ago and I still can't forget it.
Macbeth's soliliquy (more or less, don't think I've got all of the punctuation correct)
I had to memorize this in my senior year of highschool. That was 21 years ago and I still can't forget it.
weinhold
Puritan Board Freshman
Faulkner certainly took this quote and ran with it.
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