GREEK TRAGEDIES AS PLAYS FOR PERFORMANCE pp 1-11

1
Introduction
Greek tragedy was an art form initiated in ancient Athens towards the end of the sixth
century BC and developed during the fifth century BC. Although tragedies continued to be acted
and composed during the fourth century and later, all that survives to us in more or less
complete, as opposed to fragmentary, form consists of 33 plays, said to date from 472 to
406 BC and traditionally attributed to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.1
These plays have been studied and valued in later times for a variety of reasons. Most of them
survived in the first place because they were selected in late antiquity or the Middle Ages as ‘set
books” in schools for the purpose of teaching the grammar and syntax of the ancient Greek
language. Although there were occasional performances from the Renaissance onwards, they
were primarily regarded as materials for pedagogic purposes or textual criticism until the early
twentieth century, when interest in them as major works of drama became established among a
wider public. In due course this inspired a plethora of new translations or original plays based on
them. Scholars have explored their stagecraft as well as their literary qualities. Much recent work
has examined the plays as socio‐historic documents which help to illuminate the period in which
they were composed on general issues such as group identity, gender and class. Finally, the last
century has seen an unprecedented rise of public interest in those ancient texts as plays for
performance on stage by professional or amateur actors.
The aim of this book is to focus on four tragedies of Aeschylus, three of Sophocles and three of
Euripides, exploring each play on its own in terms of its original status as a theatrical artefact. I
try to show how these ten texts “work” as drama and, more specifically, how the three great
poets used the characteristic form of the Greek tragic genre to create dramatic sequences that
would engage and hold their audiences’ attention and stir their emotions in the theater, while at
the same time encouraging them to reflect on matters of profound importance. This introductory
chapter attempts to define the ancient poet’s task in terms of this form, the social context in
which the plays were composed to be presented, and the human and other resources that were
available at the time. All these factors dictated their composition and are important to their
consideration as works of art.

Greek Tragedy as a Genre

“Greek tragedy is a hybrid form, and the different parts of the drama are differentiated in form
and style” (Rutherford 2012, 29). All our surviving plays follow a standard pattern, a sequence of
discrete sections akin to the “movements” of a classical symphony or the “numbers” of
an eighteenth century oratorio and in modern music theater. Put as its simplest, these movements
alternate between spoken “episodes” (scenes) for one to three solo actors and “odes” (songs)
performed by a chorus. The normal meter for the former is the iambic trimeter, while the latter
are delivered in a variety of so‐called lyric meters. Variations on this pattern are mentioned later
but it is enough at this point to note the hybrid character of Greek tragedy and the particular
challenge that it presented to the ancient dramatist in creating a continuity in unfolding his story
on stage to his audience in a compelling and satisfying way. To understand how these plays
“work” as drama, we need to analyse the “structure of feeling,” the controlled sequence of
emotional responses implicit in this basic alternation of movements for chorus and solo actors
and to observe how these two disparate elements are united in the individual texts.
This peculiar form calls for some explanation. Here we have European drama in its infancy and
we need to ask how it came about. Unfortunately, the detailed evidence for the origins of Greek
tragedy is difficult and obscure; we can never be entirely sure how or when it began, and this
book is not the place to argue a problematic issue.2 Tragedies were certainly being performed at
Athens by the end of the sixth century and we have the firm date of 472 BC for our first
surviving example of the genre, Aeschylus’ Persae. An answer to the question, “How did
Greek tragedy take the hybrid form that it did?” may be more easily sought if we briefly examine
the performance genres which existed in Greece earlier in the sixth century.
The ancestor of the tragic chorus is surely to be found in the so‐called genre of “choral lyric,”
that is the performance of cult poetry sung and danced by a choir to the accompaniment of the
lyre or other musical instrument. These performances were originally “sacral,” religious acts
offered in honour of gods or heroes in the hope of blessings for the local community. Examples
would include the “paean” performed in honour of Apollo, or the “dithyramb” which was
associated particularly with Dionysus, the god of wine and (later) of the dramatic festivals at
Athens. Subsequently, choral lyric could be essentially secular, as in the epinikion, a hymn
celebrating the victory of an athlete in one of the great inter‐state festivals like the Olympics, an
art perfected in the fifth century by the poet Pindar. The whole genre evidently goes back to the
seventh century and was mainly developed in the southern part of Greece, the Peloponnese, not
so much in Athens itself, though an Attic vase dated to 560–50 BC3 offers evidence for pre‐
dramatic performances by a chorus of satyrs, who were always associated with the worship of
Dionysus. It is significant that the choral songs of Attic tragedy adopt certain features of the
Doric dialect which was spoken in some cities of the Peloponnese.
The other performance art from which Greek tragedy fairly obviously derives was the public
recitation of epic verse by professionals known as “rhapsodes.” By 514 at the latest, and very
possibly earlier, competitions in the recitation of Homeric verse were held in Athens at the Great
Panathenaea, the quadrennial festival in honour of the city’s patron goddess Athena, alongside
contests in athletic and equestrian events. The Iliad and Odyssey themselves derive from a
tradition of oral recitation in a preliterate culture and make perfect performance poetry in their
combination of third‐person narrative and speeches, often quite long, that are put into the mouths
of the various characters. Epic poetry would doubtless have demanded the kind of projection of
voice and personality that was associated with acting or any form of public speaking; it must also
have included an element of impersonation in the delivery of the speeches. The rhapsodic
contests can thus be seen as leading naturally into tragedy, in which a story was presented by
masked actors individually impersonating a variety of characters, with the narrative element
covered by more nondescript “messengers,” through whom the audience could learn, by ear, of
such events in the story as could not convincingly be enacted before their eyes.
If tragedy starts with a chorus and a messenger, it is not difficult to regard the tragic contests at
Athens as entailing a marriage between two pre‐existing art forms, choral lyric and epic
recitation. These contests were an important feature of the City Dionysia, the annual festival in
honour of Dionysus, which may have been inaugurated in its earliest form by the tyrant
Pisistratus in about 534 – though scholars debate the dating of the various additions which led to
the festival as it became in the Periclean age, during the second half of the fifth century, when the
art of tragedy had grown to maturity. There was a tradition in ancient times that credited a certain
Thespis with the idea of introducing a solo actor (himself), perhaps by detaching the leader of a
lyric chorus and getting him to deliver long speeches in response to questions put to him by the
chorus. This would fit the Greek word for an actor, hypocrites, usually understood as meaning
“answerer.” Thespis is also supposed to have disguised himself, a crucial innovation which leads
to drama as we understand it, and to have worn stylized makeup or a linen mask.
For all these uncertainties, when it comes to our first surviving tragedy, the Persae of
Aeschylus, we find a sequence of long movements for the Chorus of Persian Elders, punctuated
by other movements, including a central Messenger scene, which involve one or two solo actors
who make their entrances and exits at various points in the drama. That the chorus was initially
thought of as the primary element is suggested by the term epeisodion, meaning “insertion,”
which was later used as the formal description of the intervening scenes for solo actors and gives
us our own word “episode.”

The Social Context

Before we can fully understand how the individual plays work as drama, it is important to
consider the various external factors which will have shaped the poet’s composition. First of all
is the social context in which the plays were first performed at Athens.
Tragedies during the fifth century were designed for presentation at the City Dionysia, the
festival of Dionysus at Athens, which was held over five or six days in late March when the seas
were navigable and the city full of visitors after the winter.4 A preliminary procession brought the
image of Dionysus to his theater, which was situated on the south slope of the Acropolis; and this
was followed on the next day by another, very grand, procession to the sacred precinct adjacent
to the theater, where animals were sacrificed and bloodless offerings made. During the
Peloponnesian war, at some point before the performance of tragedies, the sons of citizens killed
in battle were paraded in full armor in the theater, as was the tribute brought by Athens’ subject
allies. Tragedies were also performed at another festival, the Lenaea, of which we know much
less.
The dramatic performances took place over the next three or four days. Three tragedians
competed, each with three tragedies and a satyr play, an altogether lighter affair, which involved
a chorus of equine satyrs and so brought the poet’s entry to a more specifically “Dionysiac”
climax. Contests in comedy were added in about 486 and room in the program was found for five
of these plays too. From the late sixth century each of the ten tribes had contributed choruses,
one of men and another of boys, for contests in the dithyramb, a choral song in honour of
Dionysus. With all this fitted into such a short spell of time, the days must have been extremely
long and the demands on the audience’s concentration phenomenal.
The three poets chosen to compete in the tragic contests were selected by a leading state official,
the eponymous archon. Each poet was his own director, composer and choreographer;

PORTABLE LITERATURE pp. 802-805

Dramatic Literature
The distinctive appearance of a script, with its divisions into acts and scenes, identifies drama as
a unique form of literature. A play is written to be per- formed in front of an audience by actors
who take on the roles of the charac- ters and who present the story through dialogue and action.
(An exception is a closet drama, which is meant to be read, not performed.) In fact, the term
theater comes from the Greek word theasthai, which means “to view” or “to see.” Thus, drama is
different from novels and short stories, which are meant to be read.

Origins of Modern Drama

The Ancient Greek Theater

The dramatic presentations of ancient Greece developed out of religious rites performed to honor gods
or to mark the coming of spring. Play- wrights such as Aeschylus (525–456 b.c.), Sophocles (496–406
b.c.), and Euripides (480?–406 b.c.) wrote plays to be performed and judged at com- petitions held
during the yearly Dionysian festivals. Works were chosen by a selection board and evaluated by a panel
of judges. To compete in the contest, writers had to submit three tragedies, which could be either based
on a common theme or unrelated, and one comedy. Unfortunately, very few of these ancient Greek
plays survive today.

The open-air, semicircular ancient Greek theater, built into the side of a hill, looked much like a primitive
version of a modern sports stadium. Some Greek theaters, such as the Athenian theater, could seat
almost seventeen thousand spectators. Sitting in tiered seats, the audience would look down on the
orchestra, or “dancing place,” occupied by the chorus—originally a group of men (led by an individual
called the choragos) who danced and chanted and later a group of onlookers who commented on the
drama.

enabling the audience to hear the lines spoken by the actors. Each actor wore a stylized mask, or
persona, to convey to the audience the personal- ity traits of the particular character being portrayed—a
king, a soldier, a wise old man, a young girl (female roles were played by men). The mouths of these
masks were probably constructed so they amplified the voice and projected it into the audience. In
addition, the actors wore kothorni, high shoes that elevated them above the stage, perhaps also helping
to project their voices. Due to the excellent acoustics, audiences who see plays per- formed in these
ancient theaters today can hear clearly without the aid of microphones or speaker systems.

Because actors wore masks and because males played the parts of women and gods as well as men,
acting methods in the ancient Greek theater were probably not realistic. In their masks, high shoes, and
full-length tunics (called chiton), actors could not hope to appear natural or to mimic the atti- tudes of
everyday life. Instead, they probably recited their lines while stand- ing in stylized poses, with emotions
conveyed more by gesture and tone than by action. Typically, three actors had all the speaking roles. One
actor—the protagonist—would play the central role and have the largest speaking part. Two other actors
would divide the remaining lines between them. Although other characters would come on and off the
stage, they would usually not have speaking roles.

Ancient Greek tragedies were typically divided into five parts. The first part was the prologos, or
prologue, in which an actor gave the background or explanations that the audience needed to follow the
rest of the drama. Then came the párodos, in which the chorus entered and commented on the events
presented in the prologue. Following this were several episo- dia, or episodes, in which characters spoke
to one another on the stage and developed the central conflict of the play. Alternating with episodes
were stasimon (choral odes), in which the chorus commented on the exchanges that had taken place
during the preceding episode. Frequently, the choral odes were divided into strophes, or stanzas, which
were recited or sung as the chorus moved across the orchestra in one direction, and antistrophes, which
were recited as it moved in the opposite direction. (Interestingly, the chorus stood between the
audience and the actors, often functioning as an additional audience, expressing the political, social, and
moral views of the community.) The fifth part was the exodos, the last scene of the play, during which
the conflict was resolved and the actors left the stage.

Using music, dance, and verse—as well as a variety of architectural and technical innovations—the
ancient Greek theater was able to convey the traditional themes of tragedy. Thus, the Greek theater
powerfully expressed ideas that were central to the religious festivals in which they first appeared: the
reverence for the cycles of life and death, the unavoidable dictates of the gods, and the inscrutable
workings of fate.

The Elizabethan Theater

The Elizabethan theater, influenced by the classical traditions of Roman and Greek dramatists, traces its
roots back to local religious pageants performed at medieval festivals during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Town guilds—organizations of craftsmen who worked in the same profession— reenacted Old
and New Testament stories: the fall of man, Noah and the flood, David and Goliath, and the crucifixion of
Christ, for example. Church fathers encouraged these plays because they brought the Bible to a largely
illiterate audience. Sometimes these spectacles, called mystery plays, were presented in the market
square or on the church steps, and at other times actors appeared on movable stages or wagons called
pageants, which could be wheeled to a given location. (Some of these wagons were quite elaborate, with
trapdoors and pulleys and an upper tier that simulated heaven.) As mystery plays became more popular,
they were performed in series over several days, presenting an entire cycle of a holiday—the crucifixion
and resurrection of Christ during Easter, for example. Related to mystery plays are morality plays, which
developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Unlike mystery plays, which depict scenes from the
Bible, morality plays allegorize the Christian way of life. Typically, characters representing various virtues
and vices struggle or debate over the soul of man. Everyman (1500), the best known of these plays,
dramatizes the good and bad qualities of Everyman and shows his struggle to determine what is of value
to him as he journeys toward death.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, mystery and morality plays had lost ground to a new secular
drama. One reason for this decline was that mystery and morality plays were associated with Catholicism
and consequently discouraged by the Anglican clergy. In addition, newly discovered plays of ancient
Greece and Rome introduced a dramatic tradition that supplanted the traditions of religious drama.
English plays that followed the classic model were sensational and bombastic, often dealing with murder,
revenge, and blood retribution. Appealing to privileged classes and commoners alike, these plays were
extremely popular. (One source estimates that in London, between 20,000 and 25,000 people attended
performances each week.)

In spite of the popularity of the theater, actors and playwrights encountered a number of difficulties.
First, they faced opposition from city officials who were averse to theatrical presentations because they
thought that the crowds attending these performances spread disease. Puritans opposed the theater
because they thought plays were immoral and sinful. Finally, some people attached to the royal court
opposed the theater because they thought that the playwrights undermined the authority of Queen
Elizabeth by spread- ing seditious ideas. As a result, during Elizabeth’s reign, performances were placed
under the strict control of the Master of Revels, a public official who had the power to censor plays (and
did so with great regularity) and to grant licenses for performances.

Acting companies that wanted to put on a performance had to obtain a license—possible only with the
patronage of a powerful nobleman—and to perform the play in an area designated by the queen.
Despite these difficulties, a number of actors and playwrights gained a measure of financial
independence by joining together and forming acting companies. These com- panies of professional
actors performed works such as Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish
Tragedy in tavern courtyards and then eventually in permanent theaters. According to scholars, the
structures of the Elizabethan theater evolved from these tavern courtyards.

William Shakespeare’s plays were performed at the Globe Theatre (a corner of which was unearthed in
December 1988). Although scholars do not know the exact design of the original Globe, drawings from
the period provide a good idea of its physical features. The major difference between the Globe and
today’s theaters is the multiple stages on which action could be performed. The Globe consisted of a
large main stage that extended out.

A HANDBOOK TO THE RECEPTION OF GREEK TRAGEDY,pp. 22-23

Aristotle’s Poetics
Aristotle’s Poetics is, of course, one of the ancient texts with the most momentous and
influential reception history of its own.28 And perhaps its status as a classic of philosophical
esthetics is in part responsible for the curious fact that the Poetics is rarely studied as a
document of tragedy reception in the fourth century, i.e., as a response to, rather than an initiator
of, the cultural dynamics to do with tragedy.29 On a philosophical level, its main target is clearly
Plato, who in the Republic had argued for an inferior and deceptive ontological status of
tragedy qua being the (theatrical) presentation of a representation (our “reality”), hence thrice
removed from the truth (the realm of “ideas”). This even led Plato to ban tragedy from the ideal
state.30 For Aristotle, on the other hand, tragedy is not just unsuspicious but even natural, because
the need for mimesis (“imitation”) is an anthropological constant deeply engrained in every
human being (Poetics 1448b4ff.). The adjective “pro-theatrical” can justly be applied to
the Poetics, not least because Aristotle, at the end of his definition of tragedy
(Poetics 1449b24–1449b28), credits it with providing catharsis (“cleansing”) of its recipient.
Whatever Aristotle may mean precisely by catharsis—the debate is long-standing and remains
unresolved31—there can be no doubt that Aristotle considers it to be something beneficial,
constructive, healthy, and desirable. Tragedy is good for those exposed to it. It is a cultural force
that should be embraced and not repressed. This applies in particular to one tragedy that,
according to Aristotle’s normative framework, is perfectly constructed, Sophocles’ Oedipus
the King (Aristotle’s preference for Sophocles over Euripides is palpable throughout
the Poetics and constitutes an interesting contrast to the general taste of the fourth century
which, as previously discussed, strongly favored Euripides).
Upon closer inspection, however, the Aristotelian endorsement of tragedy becomes more
ambiguous, even problematic, casting an interesting light on the Poetics as a document of
fourth-century tragedy reception. Not only is Aristotle’s above-quoted definition of tragedy
highly formalist in nature (it is tragedy’s form which appears to bring about the desired effect
of catharsis). One may, more importantly, wonder how valid and applicable a definition and
discussion of Greek tragedy can possibly be which ignores the chorus as well as the
omnipresence (real or conceptual) of the divine, both of which are clearly two of Greek tragedy’s
crucial characteristics. Aristotle’s secularized formalism is part of a general tendency that can be
observed in fourth-century thinking about poetry, namely to separate poetry from its occasion,
texts from their contexts.32 One important corollary of this is Aristotle’s insistence
that reading alone is a sufficient condition for tragedy to come into its own and achieve all its
effects (Poetics 1462a11–1462a14). Performance therefore becomes an add-on, an
embellishment of sorts which is, in the last resort, dispensable. While the visual and performative
dimension (opsis) remains one of what Aristotle considers the six fundamental parts of tragedy
(the other five being plot, character, diction, design, and music), it is also the one that is “least
essential to the art of poetry” (hêkista oikeion tês poiêtikês: Poetics 1450b17f.).
This is significant, not least from the vantage point of Reception History. The fact that Attic
tragedy is a complex and multi-dimensional performance art was surely central to its creation as
an innovative mode of artistic expression, and was presumably a key factor in its enormous
success and appeal from very early on. It was the number and range of its spectators, voting
with their feet, which propelled tragedy to its lofty position as a premier art form, rivaling or
even exceeding that of the very best Greek poetry in other genres. It was tragedy’s
mass audiences which were targeted by Aristophanes in his Frogs or Lycurgus in his
invective against Leocrates. And it was performance, possibly aided by texts, which inspired
the tragedy-related vase paintings. By re-conceptualizing tragedy as a text, Aristotle takes it out
of those contexts of production and transfers it to those of consumption as a written cultural
product. This has significant consequences, on the one hand, for the mode of analysis which is
now “literary” rather than “performative” (diction [lexis], for instance, becomes quite
prominent, and Chapters 19–22 of the Poetics are devoted to it). The repercussions of this
“literalization” of tragedy in the Poetics were to be felt for centuries in the Western theory of
theater (arguably until the work of the semioticians from the “Prague Circle” in the 1930s). But
there were also sociological consequences, along very similar lines developed earlier on for the
tragedy-related artifacts. A literary text, which requires the ability to read well, creates very
different, and highly restrictive, barriers of access, whereas performance is, in principle,
accessible to all. As a literary item, tragedy, very much like the tragedy-related symposium
vessel, becomes a cultural product for elite consumption, to be savored on demand by the few.
The final Chapter 26 of our preserved Poetics is a remarkable piece for the history of tragedy
reception, and a fitting conclusion to this chapter. Here Aristotle confronts head-on the question
of whether epic or tragedy is the superior form of poetry, with tragedy emerging as the winner. A
decisive argument advanced by Aristotle is the one just discussed, namely, that for him, tragedy,
like epic poetry, can come into its own by reading alone, i.e., without movement and
performative instantiation (which may amplify the pleasant effect) (1462a11–1462a19). While
being of equal value to epic in this respect, tragedy, Aristotle maintains, surpasses epic in other
aspects, notably by virtue of the fact that tragedy achieves its goals in a significantly more
compressed format than the long epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey, a phenomenon which
itself provides greater pleasure (1462a18–1462b3). This de-throning of “divine” Homer (as he is
called, by “Aeschylus,” at Aristophanes Frogs 1034!) is one of the most interesting moments in
the Poetics. Two hundred or so years after the invention of tragedy, Aristotle endorses a
veritable paradigm shift in the realm of Greek poetics, and therefore much of Greek cultural and
intellectual life. And the rich, complex, and enthusiastic engagement with tragedy that can be
detected in other written, performed, and material evidence makes it clear that in his high esteem
of tragedy as the pinnacle of poetic art Aristotle was far from being alone.

PPT Theory of Tragedy and lecture

OVERVIEW

• Poetics of Aristotle is the famous study of Greek dramatic art

Compares tragedy to comedy and epic

Determines tragedy as a kind of imitation(mimesis) of life

Has a serious purpose

Uses direct actions rather than narrative to achieve the ends

Acted on stage, not read in books

The theme of tragedy is more universal and ideals

More philosophical and exalted ( held in high regard)

The greek play

• Theatron- is an amphitheater where tragedies are performed

• Open area for artificial lighting

• Amphitheaters are built at the foot of a sloping mountain.

• Both actors and chorus wear costumes and masks

• Male actors wore female roles

• There could only be three actors on stage at one time

• Chorus – made up of 15 people

• Parts were usually sang and danced by the actors

• Actors would either sing or say their lines

• All main characters should be nobles

• Greek tragedies don’t always end sadly, contrary to popular beliefs, some would end in happy
ending, but after a horrible event happens.
The role of the Chorus

• Provides opinions and points of view about the action of the play

• Is the communal voice of the play, having only one opinion

• The leader of the chorus interacts with the actors

• Structures in strophic pairs – add movements and dance

• Strophe- dancers proceed across the stage while singing

• Antistrophe- dancers turn around and come back across during actions

• Provides lessons or learning experience about the play, usually found at the end.

• Narrates an event prior to a scene

Aim of tragedy

• To bring about “ catharsis’ of the spectators or viewers

To arouse in them the sensation of pity and fear

To purge them of these emotions, the feeling is cleansed and uplifted with a brighter
understanding of the ways of gods and men.

Catharsis- is the purification or purgation of the emotions of pity and fear

A metaphor used by Aristotle to describe the effects of true tragedy

Has a healthful and humanizing effect on the viewers.

Realization that what happened to the tragic character, may happen to any one
in real life.

Through the tragic hero

What is tragedy?

• Is an imitation of an action that is serious and also having magnitude, complete in itself.

• Action is single and complete

• One –act presentation of the plot

• Presents reversal of fortune

 • peripeteia

• Involves persona renowned and of superior attainments ( Arete)

• Tragic hero

• Should be written in poetry, embellished with artistic expressions.

• A tragedy should have a single action represented as occurring in a single place and
within the course of a day.

• These principles were called, respectively, unity of action, unity of place, and unity of
time.

• A play should be performed in a single day( during the classical period of Greece)

tragic pleasure of pity and fear

• The feeling evoked by the tragic hero, after viewers watched a tragic play

• How to achieve :

• The tragic hero cannot be all good or all evil, but must be someone the audience
can identify with

• The disastrous end of the tragic hero results from a mistaken action or error of
judgment (hamartia)

• This error in judgment would rise to tragic flaw or his hubris ( excessive pride or
arrogance)

• The hubris causes the tragic hero to ignore a divine warning or to break a moral
law.

• The suffering of the tragic hero is greater than his offense

• Audience feel pity and fear

• Identify themselves to the tragic hero’s fate.

Aristotle’s perfect tragedy

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King), he considered it as the best example of the perfect
tragedy

• He believed that a good tragedy must evoke feelings of fear and pity in the audience,

• since he saw these two emotions as being fundamental to the experience of catharsis
(the process of releasing strong or pent-up emotions through art).
 • ,"pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like
ourselves."

Characteristics of a tragic hero

Be virtuous :

 In Aristotle's time, this meant that the character should be a noble in nature,

 It also meant that the character should be both capable and powerful (i.e. "heroic"),
and also feel responsible to the rules of honor and morality that guided Greek culture.

 These traits make the hero attractive and compelling, and gain the audience's sympathy.

 Be flawed:

 However noble, he must also be imperfect so that the audience can see themselves in
him

 the character must also have a tragic flaw (also called hamartia) or more generally be
subject to human error, and the flaw must lead to the character's downfall

 Makes the character more relatable- someone whom the audience can identify
with

 the source of the tragedy is internal to the character, not merely some outside
force

 It emerges from their heroic qualities—hubris (the arrogance that often

accompanies greatness)

 Must suffer a reversal of fortune:

 must have discovered his fate thru his own actions, not by things happening to him.

 the character should suffer a terrible reversal of fortune, from good to bad.

 Such a reversal does not merely mean a loss of money or status.

 It means that the work should end with the character dead or in immense
suffering, and to a degree that outweighs what it seems like the character
deserved.

 Catastrophe

The tragic vision

• These are interrelated elements that help establish the tragic vision

The ending is catastrophic

 The catastrophic ending is inevitable

The presence of human limitations as seen in the main character ( protagonist)

The protagonist suffers terribly

The suffering is disproportionate to his culpability

Yet, the suffering is redemptive, bringing out the noblest of human capabilities for learning

The suffering brigs out the capacity for accepting moral responsibility

The five stages of the downfall of a Sophoclean tragic hero

• Pre-eminent is one who surpasses all the others or should be looked up to

• The tragic flaw stage where he shows a blemish, weakness, or imperfection

• The downfall of the hero

• Gaining insight about his action

• Rising from the fall

Tragedy in a nutshell

• Tragic hero

• Of noble family

• Tragic flaw - excessive pride

• the role of justice and/or revenge in the judgments.

• Peripeteia - A reversal of fortune

• brought about because of the hero's error in judgment.

• 3) Anagnorisis

• The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought about by the hero's own actions

• 5) Catastrophe

The character's fate must be greater than deserved

Four concepts in greek tragedy

• Arete- excellence, goodness, moral virtue

• “be all what you can be”

• Hubris – excessive pride, arrogance, too much self-confidence

• It parallels the Hebrew word pasha, meaning transgression.

• It represents a sense of false pride that makes a man defy God, sometimes to the
degree that he considers himself an equal.

• Ate- also refers to an action performed by a hero that leads to his death or downfall.

• Nemesis - is divine retribution sought against the people guilty of hubris.

• In a general sense, nemesis refers to an indomitable rival, or an inescapable situation

that causes misery and death.