In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern
conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of
theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive.
This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the
definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in
modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance
given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated
emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet
"pity and fear" still serve as well as any other terms to describe the
emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however,
hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror,
despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has
appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The
reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense
of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as
the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern
tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though
double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the
Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a
return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare
instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the
action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes
have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been
confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and
pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of
tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in
England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the
sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men
and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary
tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been
reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but
here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the
last century, to prose.
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