Comparison Between Hamlet And Aristotelian Tragedy

Shakespeare sprinkles subtle lines alluding to Hamlet’s apparent cowardice and failure as a classical revenger. In addition to this, Shakespeare may intentionally delay Hamlet’s revenge and remove emphasis from his passion to break the trend of morally blind, obsessive, psychopathic avengers as traditionally depicted in plays such as “The Spanish Tragedy”.

A “tragedy, for Shakespeare, is the genre of uncompensated suffering” (Dutton and Howard, 2003, p. 9). To really understand the play Othello is to truly understand a tragedy; thus, this researcher will analyze Aristotle’s view point and compare it to phrases (or quotes) from Shakespeare’s Othello.

Shakespeare's drama Hamlet has become a central piece of literature of Western culture. It is the story of a prince named Hamlet, who lost his father. Soon after that he has to confront multiple obstacles and devises a series of situations to defend the new king's royalty. Furthermore, he had to prove that King Claudius, who was the prince's uncle, had killed Hamlet's father. This story has remained among the most popular and the most controversial plays around the world. It generates controversy for all the doubts that this play leaves with the readers. One of the most questioning situations in the play is the delay of Hamlet in avenging Claudius' for his father's death. As a reader this

Hamlet is as much a story of emotional conflict, paranoia, and self-doubt as it is one of revenge and tragedy. The protagonist, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is instructed by his slain father’s ghost to enact vengeance upon his uncle Claudius, whose treacherous murder of Hamlet’s father gave way to his rise to power. Overcome by anguish and obligation to avenge his father’s death, Hamlet ultimately commits a number of killings throughout the story. However, we are not to view the character Hamlet as a sick individual, but rather one who has been victimized by his own circumstances.

2. What evokes “the tragic feeling” in us as viewers of a play? What is the cause of the

In literature, a tragedy is defined as a drama where the main character in the end suffers extreme sorrow because of their mistakes or poor judgment. The characters that are fated to suffer the extreme sorrow, the tragedy, are (called) tragic characters. These tragic characters, however, must follow Aristotle’s principles which include:

Poetics, where he defines what makes a tragic hero. Aristotle suggests that a tragic hero is a

Aristotle presents that there is a complex relationship between tragedy and emotions. For him, it is expressed through pity and fear. Konstan argues:

Before beginning, however, it is necessary to examine the aim of Tragedy. A Tragic work, according to Aristotle, was simply one that showed men as better than they typically are in everyday reality. Tragedy served to show mankind at his noblest, without, however, depicting man as unreal or unbelievable. To represent a noble man

Aristotle, the great fourth-century Greek philosopher labeled this tragedy as “an imitation of an action of high importance, complete and of some amplitude: in language enhanced by distinct and varying beauties…by means of pity and fear effecting its purgation of these emotions” (qtd. in Kennedy & Gioia 885). Aristotle was portraying the epic Shakespearean drama, Othello. Aristotle prescribed three main elements for a disastrous theater recipe: First is a hamartia, or a tragic flaw in the main character that leads to the demise; second, catharsis or an emotional release of the audience’s sensations derived from the actors, so they seem to have felt they have learnt something about the play; and lastly, anagnorisis or the character’s astonishment of something that may have not before realized (Kennedy & Gioia 856-857). The protagonist in Shakespeare’s Othello satisfies all of Aristotle’s necessities for a tragic hero, as Othello is the character of magnificent status, which falls from that status of power to one of shame because of his hamartia. Furthermore the plot of Othello contains an influential katharsis through its peak and deduction, and an anagnorisis when Othello comprehends that Desdemona and Iago are not who they appear to

    By definition, a tragedy is a story that details the downfall of a protagonist. Most often, the protagonist (tragic hero) is a member of high society who is faced with an oppositional force, be it internal or external. In his Poetics, Aristotle states that "tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these- thought and character- are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions, again all success or failure depends...." This quote illustrates an aspect of tragedy upon which many works are based, including

The tragedies Hamlet, Oedipus the King, and Death of a Salesman have strikingly different plots and characters; however, each play shares common elements in its resolution. The events in the plays’ closings derive from a tragic flaw possessed by the protagonist in each play. The downfall of each protagonist is caused by his inability to effectively cope with his tragic flaw. The various similarities in the closing of each play include elements of the plot, the reflection of other characters on the misfortune of the tragic hero, and expression of important themes through the dialogue of the characters.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the world’s most renowned plays, one which has stood the test of time over the course of 400 years, finding relevance even today. A complex and sophisticated work, Hamlet is a masterful weaving of the myriad of components that make up the human experience; it delicately touches upon such topics as death, romance, vengeance, and mania, among several others. Being so intricate and involuted, Hamlet has been interpreted in countless fashions since its conception, with each reader construing it through their own subjectivity. Some of the most popular and accredited methods of analyzing the work are the Traditional Revenge Tragedy, Existentialist, Psychoanalytic, Romantic, and Act of Mourning approaches.

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies. At first glance, it holds all of the common occurrences in a revenge tragedy which include plotting, ghosts, and madness, but its complexity as a story far transcends its functionality as a revenge tragedy. Revenge tragedies are often closely tied to the real or feigned madness in the play. Hamlet is such a complex revenge tragedy because there truly is a question about the sanity of the main character Prince Hamlet. Interestingly enough, this deepens the psychology of his character and affects the way that the revenge tragedy takes place. An evaluation of Hamlet’s actions and words over the course of the play can be determined to see that his ‘outsider’ outlook on society,

Aristotle defines a tragedy as a ‘representation of an action which is important, complete and limited in length. It is enacted not recited and by arousing pity and fear, it gives an outlet to emotions of this type.’