Learn about Renaissance tragedy from William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar
An informal overview of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, particularly William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Hamlet.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)This video provides a brief synopsis of the plot of Shakespeare's masterpiece Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)The madness of Ophelia, as analyzed by the cast and crew of a Folger Shakespeare Library production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Short excerpts from a Folger Shakespeare Library production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, with critical analysis by the cast and crew.
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Transcript
Outside the Book. Number Two: Tragedy. Long before tabloids and Twitter meltdowns, your best bet for a diverting bit of [INAUDIBLE] was Renaissance tragedy. Renaissance tragedies are usually based around one big character, whose name will probably be in the play's title and who, spoiler alert, will be collapsed in a big heap of blood, tears, and former friends' swords by the end. Like comedy, tragedy's based around some kind of breakdown.
It could be a personal one, like dithering Prince Hamlet, or a social or political breakdown, like the fallout from kebabbing poor, old Caesar. Beyond on the despair fest, though, tragedies have strong moral messages that might warn the powerful against tyranny and the vicious against, well, being themselves. They also criticize the dominance social order.
The hero's fairly reasonable needs for love, like the Duchess of Malfi, or security, like Othello, will be so at odds with the social order that it will quite literally be the death of them. But when it comes to the ending, comedy and tragedy are distant cousins. Tragedy doesn't leave you with the warm, fuzzy glow of a happy end, instead you get to gorge on a delicious spectacle of madness and violence as the play hurtles towards the title character's certain doom. It's great fun.
It could be a personal one, like dithering Prince Hamlet, or a social or political breakdown, like the fallout from kebabbing poor, old Caesar. Beyond on the despair fest, though, tragedies have strong moral messages that might warn the powerful against tyranny and the vicious against, well, being themselves. They also criticize the dominance social order.
The hero's fairly reasonable needs for love, like the Duchess of Malfi, or security, like Othello, will be so at odds with the social order that it will quite literally be the death of them. But when it comes to the ending, comedy and tragedy are distant cousins. Tragedy doesn't leave you with the warm, fuzzy glow of a happy end, instead you get to gorge on a delicious spectacle of madness and violence as the play hurtles towards the title character's certain doom. It's great fun.
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