tragedy

Introduction
Development
- Origins in Greece
  - Aeschylus: the first great tragedian
  - Sophocles: the purest artist
  - Euripides: the dark tragedian
  - Later Greek drama
- The long hiatus
- Elizabethan
  - Marlowe and the first Christian tragedy
  - Shakespearean tragedy
  - From comedy to tragedy
  - Shakespeare’s tragic art
  - Decline in 17th-century England
- Neoclassical
  - Corneille and Racine
  - The English “heroic play”
  - The eclipse of tragedy
- A new vehicle: the novel
  - Dostoyevsky’s tragic view
  - The American tragic novel
Tragedy and modern drama
- Tragic themes in Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov
- American tragic dramatists
- Other serious drama
- Absence of tragedy in Asian drama
- Loss of viability in the West
Theory of tragedy
- Classical theories
- Elizabethan approaches
- Neoclassical theory
- Romantic theories
  - Coleridge
  - Schlegel
  - Hegel
  - Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
  - Tragedy in music
- Critical theory in the 20th century and beyond

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images & Videos

The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus

Learn about the characters of Othello as discussed by the cast and crew of a Folger Shakespeare Library production

Hear a critical analysis of Hamlet's character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby raises a champagne glass, with 'The Great Gatsby' book cover superimposed and an arrow pointing to it.

Portrait of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist and poet, with glasses, prominent sideburns, and formal attire, photographed in 1901.

John Millington Synge

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children)

Learn about Renaissance tragedy from William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar

At a Glance

Hamlet (1948)

tragedy summary

tragedy: Media

literature

Videos

Learn about the characters of Othello as discussed by the cast and crew of a Folger Shakespeare Library production

Learn about the characters of Othello as discussed by the cast and crew of a Folger Shakespeare Library production

William Shakespeare's Othello is discussed by the cast and crew of a Folger...

Video: Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Hear a critical analysis of Hamlet's character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hear a critical analysis of Hamlet's character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Short excerpts from a Folger Shakespeare Library production of William Shakespeare's...

Video: Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby raises a champagne glass, with 'The Great Gatsby' book cover superimposed and an arrow pointing to it.

The Great Gatsby: From Flop to Great American Novel

How did Gatsby become so…great?

Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Learn about Renaissance tragedy from William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar

Learn about Renaissance tragedy from William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar

An informal overview of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, particularly William Shakespeare's...

Video: © Open University (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Images

Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, marble bust.

Photos.com/Thinkstock

Euripides

Euripides

Euripides, marble herm copied from a Greek original, c. 340–330 bce;...

Courtesy of the Soprintendenza alle Antichita della Campania, Naples

The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus

The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus

Faust, detail from the title page of the 1616 edition of The Tragicall History...

Courtesy of the trustees of the British Library; photograph, R.B. Fleming

Portrait of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist and poet, with glasses, prominent sideburns, and formal attire, photographed in 1901.

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

John Millington Synge

John Millington Synge

John Millington Synge.

From The Works of John M. Synge, 1910

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children)

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children)

Setting for a scene in Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage...

Mordecai Gorelik Collection

Hamlet (1948)

Hamlet (1948)

Holding Yorick's skull, Hamlet (played by Laurence Olivier) contemplates death in...

© Archive Photos

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