H/W 10th November 2016
Shakespeare Anthology Summaries
Section A
1 Shakespeare Tragedy
Chaucer, the first to use ‘tragedy’ as an English word (14th C), suggests the cause of the misfortune is unknowable
and this increases the effect of the tragic.
This apparently arbitrary quality of tragedy is resonant in the silence or unanswered questions in Shakespeare and
may reflect the struggle that religions have in explaining evil.
He is portraying the agonising struggle of characters whose initial understanding of their ordered world is
undermined by terrible and inexplicable events; the tragedy stems from apparent lack of meaning of terrible events
and is an emotional struggle rather than a philosophical or intellectual one.
This idea enables us to form a concept of ‘Shakespearian tragedy’ contrary to the famous Kenneth Muir view that
‘there is no such thing as Shakespearian tragedy; there are only Shakespearian tragedies’. Although we don’t have a
formalised theory of his tragedy, we see the common theme to be its incomprehensibility, which makes it all the
more devastating.
2 The Pleasure of Tragedy
Suggests that in a world of torturers, people would be naturally pleased by the blinding of Oedipus, or it would not
be surprising if an audience were inwardly driven by envy and were delighted by the fall of someone who is seen as
better than that person.
Aristotle’s ‘Oikeia Hedone’ is immediately distinguished from the pleasure of the blinding of Oedipus; ‘the proper
pleasure’ of tragedy (Poetics, 1459 a 21) fancy that the same is true in the case of a gloating and envious spectator.
In tragic theatre, suffering/ death are seen as matter for grief/ fear, after which they appear in their turn for
enjoyment.
Nuttall suggests that ‘the pleasure of tragedy’ is an uncomfortable phrase, and there’s an awkwardness in the
mildness of the term ‘pleasure’; the Nietzschean oxymoron ‘tragic joy’ is easier to accept because it fights fire with
fire. The awkwardness is more obvious in our century. Ancient Stoics and Epicureans argued about most things, but
were united in their bewilderment of this. The shift of taste is suggested to not solve the problem of tragic pleasure,
but instead it sets a similarly challenging problem.
Many things, including the notion of pleasure, seem to come in bits; ‘quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is
as good as poetry’ – Jeremy Bentham. Here pleasure is offered for inspection as a luminously simple datum: poetry
and push-pin are different things but pleasure is pleasure – semper idem. The datum can prove strangely elusive.
Nuttall suggested that one can enjoy an activity without thinking consciously ‘I’m enjoying this’ and will instead only
think of the activity itself.
3 The Shakespearean Tragic Hero
Bradley starts off by stating and collecting the facts from an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy. To begin from the
outside, such a tragedy brings up a considerable number of characters (more than a Greek play), but the story is of
one person or at most two – the ‘hero’ and/ or ‘heroine’; it’s only in the love tragedies that the ‘heroine’ is the
centre of the play.
Shakespeare Anthology Summaries
Section A
1 Shakespeare Tragedy
Chaucer, the first to use ‘tragedy’ as an English word (14th C), suggests the cause of the misfortune is unknowable
and this increases the effect of the tragic.
This apparently arbitrary quality of tragedy is resonant in the silence or unanswered questions in Shakespeare and
may reflect the struggle that religions have in explaining evil.
He is portraying the agonising struggle of characters whose initial understanding of their ordered world is
undermined by terrible and inexplicable events; the tragedy stems from apparent lack of meaning of terrible events
and is an emotional struggle rather than a philosophical or intellectual one.
This idea enables us to form a concept of ‘Shakespearian tragedy’ contrary to the famous Kenneth Muir view that
‘there is no such thing as Shakespearian tragedy; there are only Shakespearian tragedies’. Although we don’t have a
formalised theory of his tragedy, we see the common theme to be its incomprehensibility, which makes it all the
more devastating.
2 The Pleasure of Tragedy
Suggests that in a world of torturers, people would be naturally pleased by the blinding of Oedipus, or it would not
be surprising if an audience were inwardly driven by envy and were delighted by the fall of someone who is seen as
better than that person.
Aristotle’s ‘Oikeia Hedone’ is immediately distinguished from the pleasure of the blinding of Oedipus; ‘the proper
pleasure’ of tragedy (Poetics, 1459 a 21) fancy that the same is true in the case of a gloating and envious spectator.
In tragic theatre, suffering/ death are seen as matter for grief/ fear, after which they appear in their turn for
enjoyment.
Nuttall suggests that ‘the pleasure of tragedy’ is an uncomfortable phrase, and there’s an awkwardness in the
mildness of the term ‘pleasure’; the Nietzschean oxymoron ‘tragic joy’ is easier to accept because it fights fire with
fire. The awkwardness is more obvious in our century. Ancient Stoics and Epicureans argued about most things, but
were united in their bewilderment of this. The shift of taste is suggested to not solve the problem of tragic pleasure,
but instead it sets a similarly challenging problem.
Many things, including the notion of pleasure, seem to come in bits; ‘quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is
as good as poetry’ – Jeremy Bentham. Here pleasure is offered for inspection as a luminously simple datum: poetry
and push-pin are different things but pleasure is pleasure – semper idem. The datum can prove strangely elusive.
Nuttall suggested that one can enjoy an activity without thinking consciously ‘I’m enjoying this’ and will instead only
think of the activity itself.
3 The Shakespearean Tragic Hero
Bradley starts off by stating and collecting the facts from an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy. To begin from the
outside, such a tragedy brings up a considerable number of characters (more than a Greek play), but the story is of
one person or at most two – the ‘hero’ and/ or ‘heroine’; it’s only in the love tragedies that the ‘heroine’ is the
centre of the play.
