The
Greeks were highly civilized and could see with ease the unidentified
simplicity in the baffling variety of human emotions and suffering in relation
to an established set of principals. They could present in their dramas all the
terrors of living, and their clear vision of life and world order helped them
to put things in their proper place.
Their
world order was basically religious. It was not a narrow religion, but one
which provided not only a broad base but also spiritual adequacy and moral sufficiency
to a civilized race of men. It was a religion devoid of dogma, martyrs and
sacred books. It was a religion very fleetingly concerned with sin, and one
which treated sex as normal human function. It had its concept of “aidos” or
punishment and “hamartia” or purification thrust on them by fate or their own
destiny beyond the Gods. They had an abundance of tolerance towards Gods of
other religions. This made them healthy and profoundly spiritual. Within such a
framework there was naturally a greater scope for independent human action and
suffering and also for a more wiling sense of reverence. The Greeks were not
optimistic of their world but through the freedom to perform the Dionsian act,
they thought they could hope to falter their way to the Appolonian grace by way
of self realization.
Purification
or expiation is the one which brings the full realization of the tragic density
of the individual life as well as that of life viewed as a whole. It also
vindicates the Gods who allowed things to take its own course and merely
watched as spectators. Aristotle understood this concept and proposed of
tragedy, and if he led so much emphasis on the catharsis of pity and fear, it
was because he wanted the spectators to rise above pity and fear, to be able to
see this grand design in tragic drama of life.
The
main concern of tragedy is with truth and the pleasure it gives is the pleasure
of knoeledge. Plato had used the word catharsis to mean purification or
sublimation. Accepting this meaning, Aristotle seems to confirm that tragdye,
first by arousing pity and fear, ultimately sublimates and raises the spectator
to a state of understanding. Pity and fear in that nakedness distort our vision
of truth. Tragedy takes us to various rational responses, culminating in
intellectual purification. Plato’s approach to tragedy was emotional. Aristotle
sought an intellectual response to tragedy, and that response applied
consistently to Shakespeare.
Greek
tragedy was myth, ritual and drama, all in one. Their view of tragedy was all
encompassingly tragic and gloomy, mainly because their dramas justified the
ways of the Gods not in the ethical sense, but in terms of cosmic law and order
that their Gods stood for. Shakespeare felt the need for questioning their
believes of God as a cosmic, divine power, because he found the existing world
more definitely theological than mysteriously cosmic. He, however, did
gradually see a design in the suffering of the world and the law of tragedy
justifying it. This design he brought out in his tragedies. Shakespeare was
always concerned with justice. It varied with his characters and situations
though there was a distinct moral purpose in his kind of justice. His justice
was sometimes poetic, sometimes tragic, sometimes wild, but it always gave an
impression of being just sufficient to serve his tragic cause of rousing pity
and fear in audience and finally bringing about both sublimation and nemesis.
Shakespeare established a moral order, as his suffering characters grew in
stature, and acquired wisdom. Shakespeare’s tragic vision was thus almost
similar to that of Aristotle. His approach to tragedy was intellectual and not
physical as that of Plato, and catharsis to him was the culmination of the
intellectual response to the tragedy.
Samuel
Johnson once said Shakespeare’s plays are not “in the rigorous sense either
tragedies or comedies, but compositions of distinct kind.” His plays express
the course of the world where the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the
frolic of another. Shakespeare united the powers of exciting laughter and
sorrow and all his plays are divided between the ludicrous and serious
characters, producing sometimes sorrow but on other times joy and laughter.
Yet
Shakespearean plays have been divided into comedies, histories and tragedies.
Shakespearean tragedy may, in the simplest terms, be stated as a story of
exceptional calamity and sorrow, leading mostly to the death of the hero, in
high estate. Thus it is prominently the story of one person, the hero, or at most
of two, the hero and the heroine, the latter coming into prominence mainly in
love tragedies like Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespearean
tragedies, however, cannot be typified into any particular slot as has been
often stated of late. Each tragedy is a new beginning, a fresh “raid on the
inarticulate,” for although there is development there is no repetition. There
are even marked differences of manner, approach and intention in each of his
tragedies. Thus Othello is a revelation of character and its focus is own
individual and domestic qualities. Lear is universal allegory and its dramatic
technic is determined by the need to present certain human situations. Macbeth
defines a particular kind of evil that results from a lust for power. Antony and Cleopatra brings out a
conflict in our moral bearings, in sharp contrast to Macbeth where we are never
in any such doubt.
It
is too that there are certain similarities. Tragedy, in simple terms, means
that the protagonist dies. In Shakespearean tragedy too a hero of high standing
dies in the end. Throughout the play he opposes some conflicting force, either
external or internal. The tragic hero should be dominated by “hamartia” or a so
called tragic flaw, but really an excess of some character outrage, that is
“hubris” or pride. It is this “hamartia” that leads to his downfall, and
because of his status, to the downfall of others. The action in the tragedy
must appear real to the audience, so that its passion or emotion is heightened,
and the conclusion of the action thus brings release from the passion.
Tragedy
thus purifies the mind by means of pity and terror, which purges the mind of
these emotions themselves, and is termed as catharsis. Shakespeare, like
Aristotle believed that his hero of a tragedy must never be commonplace and,
his faults notwithstanding, must never be inherently bad. The hero must not be
depicted in such a manner that when he
comes to his fated end we are only to be pleased and think there has been a
good riddance. The disaster should arouse feelings of pity and terror in the
minds of the audience; terror because of the terrible consequence of our
weakness and the formidable authority which prohibits even a person of hero’s
standing to trespass against its decrees; pity at his downfall despise his
nobility and grandeur. Since the hero is a man of exceptional intelligence and
sensibilities, his sufferings due to his tragic flaw and due to the forces of
nature that are trust on him owing to that tragic flaw are also more acute than
what may be suffered by ordinary man.
The
elements of tragedy have often been split up into three aspects from the point
of view of individual action and solution. The three aspects are:
a) The tragic individual must be the champion of a
great purpose into which he devotes his whole existence.
b) The tragic action must be such that in the story
there must be threads which connect the different characters with one another,
although each of them must have some special purpose in view.
c) The tragic solution is usually held to be the
triumph of the principal of the ethical world.
Shakespearean
tragedy, however, does not follow the above characteristics in their entirety.
We do not admit that his tragedy is the work of an arbitrary fate or chance
since it proceeds from the activity of the hero. The hero has a fatal flaw
despite his noble and honourable existence. It is the combination of these two
diverse characteristics that brings out the emotions of pity and fear, as
nemesis catches up with him.
Dowden
has said that tragedy as convinced by Shakespeare is concerned with the ruin or
the restoration of the soul and of the life of man. Its subject is the subject
of good and evil in the world. In his tragedies there are certain problems
which Shakespeare pronounces as insoluble. He does not say anything about the
origin of evil, nor, as her pursues the soul of man, through the unending
torture of inferno or through the spheres made happy and radiant by the
perennial presence of a benevolent God. According to Shakespeare, evil exists
and it exists with an emphasis. In the same way, pure love also exists.
Shakespeare presents a man groping from among these myriad pull and pushes of
the moral world. He gives us no easy solution to our problems through religion.
If anything he conveys moral values based on an inviolate thought process. He
also understands that the despite his flaws man will ultimately assert
himself.
