Macbeth, like many of Shakespeare’s other tragedies, falls into both the history play and tragedy categories of Shakespeare’s plays.
- Adding to the Elizabethan audience’s fascination, tragedy is rooted in the Greek dramas of Aristotle and the three great writers Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles and the Roman adaptations of their plays (Schwartz).
- Shakespeare began writing tragedies because he found that other tragic writings lacked artistic purpose and form—specifically suspense and a climax.
- Shakespeare always focused his tragedy on the fall of a hero. His hero, almost always being a man of high social status, but having some moral weakness, character flaw, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or such, that is responsible for the fall.
- Tragedy, according to A.C Bradley, has three parts: an exposition, a conflict, and a catastrophe. The exposition shows the beginning state of the protagonist and sets up the conflict, which leads to the tragic ending. In a tragedy, the hero sets up his fall with action or lack thereof, which, with other causes, brings his fall. Bradley believes "Shakespeare's characters bring their fates upon themselves, and [...] deserve what they get" (qtd. in Schwartz).
- According to Northrop Frye, there are five stages to tragedy: encroachment, complication, reversal, catastrophe, and recognition.
- In the first stage, the protagonist makes an error in judgement that leads to their downfall. Frye says the mistake is "often unconscious", and Macbeth is one of the exceptions (qtd. in Schwartz).
- The second stage builds up the forces that will lead the protagonist to his fall.
- Reversal, the third stage, is when the protagonist realizes his fate is the opposite of what he expected.
- During the final stage, recognition, the audience and the protagonist see the event in a new perspective, in which he can "see the irony of his actions" (qtd. in Schwartz).
- Meanwhile, history plays, as the name suggests, are based upon historical events, however often issues and ideas are often from the present.
- For example,
- This also gives an evil feel to the witches and their tales of Macbeth's coming fortune, setting the mood for the tragic events that follow.
- Unfortunately, because the modern reader is often ignorant of ideas and issues of the Elizabethan audience, history plays are often hard to read or convert to other media.
- Shakespeare’s sources for these plays include Plutarch, Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (1598) and Hall's The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York (1542) (Schwartz).
- Shakespeare’s history plays are based upon English history from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries as well as Roman history and myths. In Shakespeare's time, there was an audience for plays based on both these sources because the English history plays are nationalistic, the 16th century was a time when people admired and loved classical
Finally, our group discovered that tragedy follows a specific pattern and although Shakespeare encompassed many details from the works of others, he remains one of the best known authors in the world.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Nicholas Brooke.
5 comments:
My group (10) was the other group that was assigned differentiating between the historic and the tragic play. I found it very interesting to compare and contrast the different perceptions different writers living in different time periods have said concerning what it is makes up a “tragedy.” In this article, the perspectives of A.C. Bradley and Northrop Frye are discussed, while my group chose to focus on Aristotle’s take on tragedy. Both Bradley and Frye lived fairly recently (1851-1935 and 1912-1991 respectively) while Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher from the 4th century B.C.. A.C. Bradley and Aristotle both believed that the plot of a tragedy could be divided into 3 parts: an exposition, a conflict and a catastrophe (Aristotle called these the: “incentive moment,” climax and resolution). In contrast, Frye believed that tragedy has 5 stages: encroachment, complication, reversal, catastrophe, and recognition. This follows what Aristotle defines as a complex tragedy, which includes the “reversal of intention,” recognition and the catastrophe. However, unlike Frye, Aristotle did not believe that only the better tragedies included these more “complex” characteristics, not all of them.
- Thilo
P.S. I was the one who posted the deleted comment, I realized I hadn't put my name...
My group discussed the political and social world of England in 1606, and I found that both our topics could be linked in some ways.
When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, it wasn't history. Meaning, he did not draw on a time/event that happened eons ago; he was more or less writing in the present. In fact Shakespeare wrote Macbeth to appease the current King of England at that time, James I, after the failed Gunpowder Plot (with Guy Fawkes). So I found it interesting to read your post, especially when you stated that "Meanwhile, history plays, as the name suggests, are based upon historical events, however often issues and ideas are often from the present. For example, England, at the time the play was written, had a very negative feeling towards witches, and Shakespeare chose to play on this effect when he introduces the audience to the three witches at the beginning."
So, even though on the surface it seems our two groups had different topics, both seem to boil down to similar ideas.
- Bridget
My group was assigned to research Holinshed's Chronicle of Scotland. Like you said, historic plays must have something to reference against. I believe that Holinshed's Chronicle of Scotland was Shakespeare's main source for writing Macbeth. Though the Chronicle was published only 30 or so years before Macbeth was first performed, the main characters in the tragedy were based on real people the lived over 500 years before (around the 1000s). Based on my research of Holinshed's Chronicle of Scotland, I believe that Macbeth is a good example of a historic play.
- Audrey
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