II.

Theory

The Western definition of tragedy and the debate over the function of tragic plays began in Athens, Greece, in the 4th century bc. The philosopher Plato criticized enactments of tragedy as artistically debilitating, because he felt they stirred emotions without encouraging virtuous behavior. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, however, defended the tragic spirit as an ennobling and beneficial force in the Greek-speaking world. For Aristotle, dramatic imitations of tragic events gave meaning and therapeutic relief to a population that questioned divine purpose and the standards of human virtue. In a manuscript that became known as the Poetics (about 330 bc), Aristotle meticulously described the elements and goals of tragedy on the Greek stage.

According to the Poetics, the action that animates a tragedy must be stately in tone, complete (brought to a conclusion), and of great moral significance. Every aspect of the tragic performance—plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle—must contribute to these qualities. But among a play's elements, it is plot (with beginning, middle, and end focused on a single situation) that drives the dramatic action. Moreover, Aristotle believed that the finest tragedies achieve their passionate focus through a conflict—both its development and its aftermath—that unfolds during a single day. In Antigone (441 bc?) by Greek dramatist Sophocles, the conflict is that of the individual versus the state, higher law versus a ruler’s decrees. The heroine Antigone insists upon burying her brother Polynices in obedience to the laws of the gods. But Creon, king of Thebes, has forbidden the burial of Polynices, who led a revolt against Thebes; the king orders Antigone’s death for her defiance. He later reverses his order, having realized that obedience to the gods and loyalty to family come before obedience to the state, but it is too late: Antigone, Creon’s son (who loves Antigone), and Creon’s wife have all killed themselves. Shocks of reversal, recognition, and suffering elegantly bind the spectator and the seemingly virtuous, if flawed, hero into a cosmic arena of discovery and loss. The audience's natural identification with the protagonist's final agony or painful end—in this case, Creon’s loss of his family resulting from his defiance of divine law—purges the community of fear and pity. For Aristotle, tragedy's primary goal had to be therapeutic, stimulating in the viewer an emotional release and purification known as catharsis.

Aristotle's prescriptions for the writing of tragedy heavily influenced French and Italian academics and intellectuals during the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). In the 1570s theoreticians known as neoclassicists (because they took inspiration from classical Greece and Rome) interpreted the Poetics to include the unity of place with those of action and time. Thus, not only did the single plot have to unfold in a single day, it also had to take place in a single location. Like-minded scholars limited the tragic heroes to people of royal or other highborn backgrounds. Other social codes of the aristocracy, including a sense of decorum, good taste, and simplicity, augmented the formula for tragedy in the 17th and much of the 18th centuries. In the late 18th century, however, these restrictions on the definition and formulation of tragic plays lessened, for a number of reasons. Among them was a general collapse of the aristocracy’s political power in Western Europe and the rise of a middle class.