CHAPTER ONE

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Tragedy usually focuses on figures of stature whose fall implicates others--a family, an entire group, or even a whole society--and typically the tragic protagonist becomes isolated from his or her society (Phedre's "outcast and fugitive from all" would suit Lear and Hamlet as well). In tragedy, life goes on; in comedy, life goes onward and upward.

In the tragic vision, the possibility of a happy ending is unrealized, although it is sometimes suggested, as when Lear is briefly reconciled to Cordelia. When tragedy pauses to look at comedy, it views such a happy ending as an aborted or by-passed possibility. At best, it acknowledges "what might have been" as an ironic way of magnifying "tragic waste." Tragedy tends to exclude comedy. In the tragic vision, something or someone dies or lapses into a winter of discontent.

Shakespeare began experimenting with tragedy early in his career. He wrote many tragedies (Titus Andronicus, Romeo Athens, King Lear, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus) he was interested in showing not only what men suffer, but what they miss. In the middle tragedies like Julius Ceaser, Hamlet and Othello the magic protagonist has only an oblique glance at the alternatives available to avoid disaster.

In the later ones, beginning with King Lear, the protagonist becomes much more fully aware of his responsibility    for his actions and what he misses by making the choices he does. His Macbeth and King Lear are known as great tragedies.

In drama, a tragedy recounts a causally related series of events in the life of a person of significance, culminating in an unhappy catastrophe, the whole treated with dignity and seriousness. According to Aristotle, who gave in the Poetics a normative definition of tragedy, illustrated by the Greek plays, with Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex as the best example, the purpose of a tragedy is to arouse pity and fear and thus to produce in the audience a catharsis of these emotions.

Given this purpose, Aristotle says that fear and pity may be aroused by spectacle or by the structure of the play. The latter method is, he insists, the better; hence plot is “the soul of a tragedy.” Such a plot involves a protagonist who is better than ordinary people, and this person must be brought from happiness to misery. The question of what constitutes significance for the hero is answered in each age by its concept of significance.

In a period of monarchy, Shakespeare’s protagonists were rulers; in other ages they have been and will be other kinds of persons. In an egalitarian nation, a tragic hero can be the archetypal common citizen—a worker, a police officer, a gangster, a New England farmer, a slave. But to qualify as a tragic protagonist, the hero or heroine must be a person of high characters and must face his or her destiny with courage and nobility of spirit.

Classical tragedy and romantic tragedy both emphasize the significance of a choice made by the protagonist but dictated by the protagonist’s hamartia. To insist, however, that tragedy be confined to this particular view of the universe is to limit it in unacceptable ways… …with the emergence of Ibsen in the late nineteenth century came the concept of middleclass tragedy growing out of social problems and issues. In the twentieth century, middle-class and laboring-class characters are often portrayed as the victims of social, hereditary, and environmental forces. When they receive their fate with a self-pitying whimper, they can hardly be said to have tragic dimensions. But when as happens in much modern serious drama, they face their destiny, however evil and unmerited, with courage and dignity, they are probably as truly tragic as Hamlet was to Shakespeare’s Londoners.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Distressing stories especially stories involving death, whether they’re accidents or whether they’re natural disasters, whether people are to blame or not to blame are called tragedies. It is one unavoidable circumstance that happens when it wants to happen. This might be due to carelessness on the part of an individual and probably seeking the wrong counsel towards very sensitive issues that pertain to life.  Finally, several research has been carried out on the comparative analysis on the Shakespearean tragedies but not even a single research has been carried out on the concept of tragedies in Shakespearean plays; a case study of Hamlet and Othello.

1.3   AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF STUDY

        The main aim of the study is to examine the tragedy in Shakespearean plays. Other specific objectives of the study include;

1. to determine the influence of tragedy in Shakespearean plays as seen in Hamlet and Othello.
2. to determine the extent to which tragedy in Shakespearean plays affects the society of today.
3. to determine the causative factors of tragedy in Shakespearean plays as seen in Hamlet and Othello.
4. to proffer possible solutions to the problems.

1.4   RESEARCH QUESTIONS               

1. What is the influence of tragedy in Shakespearean plays as seen in Hamlet and Othello?
2. What is the extent to which tragedy in Shakespearean plays affects the society of today?
3. What are the causative factors of tragedy in Shakespearean plays as seen in Hamlet and Othello?
4. What are possible solutions to the problems?

1.5   SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

        The study on the concept of tragedy in Shakespearean play will be of immense benefit in the sense that it will educate people on how to handle tragedy whenever it happens to them; though nobody prays for it but it’s really unpredictable.

1.6   SCOPE OF STUDY

        The study on the concept of tragedy in Shakespearean play is limited to Hamlet and Othello.

1.7   LIMITATION OF STUDY

Financial constraint- Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

Time constraint- The researcher will simultaneously engage in this study with other academic work. This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work.

1.8   DEFINITION OF TERMS

Concept          A principle or idea.  

Tragedy   An event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.