Shakespeare's understanding of tragedy's structures has changed the way we think of tragic theatre

The argument

The tragic drama has a unique history. Ancient Greeks developed a vision and style that was unknown in other cultures. Its impressive presence is a homage to Greek culture and to the lives of heroic individuals whose status brings upon them suffering and early death. Tragedy in that mould is bound up with communal standing: the hero matters because of what he is within a shared order, and his fall registers as a loss to that order. Shakespeare, on this argument, did not inherit that tradition. The Greek tragic drama was not accessible to him, as he had no direct experience of what tragedy meant to the Greeks, and that is why he did not have a sense of the potential of the power of tragedy as they had understood it. What looks at first like a limitation turns out to be the source of his originality: with no received model to reproduce, he had to build the form again out of different materials. What he built it around was the individual. Shakespeare's tragedies examined an individual's sense of desire in confronting the world on their terms, even at the expense of social bonds or their life. Shakespeare's tragic hero does not answer to any communal system of value; they answer only to themselves. Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are examples of how they act in serving themselves rather than compromising their sanity for someone else, so that the ruin arrives from inside the character rather than from a violated communal order. The result was a body of work whose characters, plots and dialogues were unconventional to the theatre. The measure of that achievement is what the plays have gone on to do: as of the present moment, Shakespearian plays are recreated, adapted into movies, and considered as an expectation to meet. Because his understanding of tragedy's structures changed the way we think of tragic theatre itself, the tragedies are the best.

Context

Classical unities: an Ancient Greek theory of dramatic tragedy stating that 1. a tragedy should have one principal action (unity of action) 2. the action in a tragedy should occur over a period of no more than 24 hours (unity of time) 3. a tragedy should exist in a single physical location (unity of place)

Premises

Counter-arguments

Although Shakespeare's work on adapting traditional structures of tragic theatre to his literary needs was innovative, this is not unique to his tragedies. His comedic plays are also structurally challenging, and unlike ancient comedies, which are often either bawdy or openly political. Shakespeare introduces significant elements of identity, wordplay, and emotional complexity, which weren't often employed before. His tragedies attracted attention because, unlike comedy and history plays, tragedy before Shakespeare had a too rigid and distinct structure to which any alterations were immediately evident. His tragedies gained attention because of his unique characters, wordplay, and emotional complexity, not because of the tragedic element.

Rejecting the premises

1. Shakespeare's comedies and histories also play with structure, introducing complex elements in a similar way to the tragedies. 2. These innovations are perhaps only obvious because tragedy before Shakespeare had a very distinct and rigid structure, whereas comedy and history plays were always more fluid.