The Fatal Flaw - heresy alert
All Shakespeare's tragic heroes have one - right?
Macbeth - ambition
Hamlet - indecision
Othello - jealousy
Lear - ? being old?
Romeo and Juliet - being in love?
Antony and Cleopatra - being in love?
Richard III - ambition?
Julius Caesar - ambition?
Titus Andronicus - being too conventional?
Timon of Athens - being angry?
Coriolanus - being angry?
Wrong!
The problem is that the theory is too simplistic to apply to all the tragedies - even all the great ones. It didn't exist before A C Bradley, who formulated it in 1904.
You can read the book here
We also tend to misunderstand 'fatal' as equating to leading to death, but it doesn't actually mean that in this case. It is concerned with Fate, not fatality.
It cannot be denied that in all the plays fate leads to the leading character's deaths, of course, but so many of the tragedies have characters who try, and fail, to defy Fate.
Romeo
'I defy you stars'
Cassius
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves
Macbeth:
Stars hide your fires
There are literally dozens of examples.
There is a great deal of discussion related to Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, but Shakespeare didn't read Greek. Although we have absolutely zero evidence that Shakespeare attended school in Stratford, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
Assuming that we are right, he would have attended Grammar school from 1571 - possibly 1582. (This is not the place to discuss the supposition that he would have been withdrawn from school because his father could no longer afford to pay for his education, but the Shakespeare boys would have been educated free.)
During that period the teachers were Simon Hunt (1571-75), Thomas Jenkins (1575-9), John Cottam(1579- 81). All were Roman Catholic. None taught any Greek.
Shakespeare studied, and spoke, exclusively Latin, beginning with Lily's Short Introduction of Grammar.
When Shakespeare joined The Grammar School he would have been taught by an usher - one of the senior boys at the school. If he did stay on beyond the age of 12, this would have been a task he would have undertaken and may be the origin of the apocryphal story that he was a school master (in Lancashire).
His texts were all in Latin and you can find a list here
There is absolutely no evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with Aristotle or his theories of tragedy. It is rather.the fact that scholars have attempted to apply Aristotelian theories to Shakespeare's plays. Poetics wasn't translated into English till 1789 though it was available in Latin, in manuscript and translated via Arabic, in the early medieval period.
A better way of looking at the tragedies is to see that their protagonists are out of their time and place.
Shakespeare is much concerned with the problem of 'aliens' throughout his career and it was a live topic in the London of his time, which doubled in size whilst he was living there. As a trading hub, much of this growth came from outside England and Elizabeth I tried to have aliens removed, unsuccessfully.
Shakespeare is always writing about what's going on around him in the plays, but he rarely makes it explicit. More than one playwright ended up in jail for their theatrical efforts, including Ben Jonson who had a T for Tyburn branded on his thumb to remind him where he'd be if he transgressed again.
"in one way or another, of all Shakespeare’s great tragic protagonists. They are all ‘fools of Time’ (to borrow a phrase from Sonnet 124) in the sense that they are hoodwinked by history." https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/an-introduction-to-shakespearean-tragedy
This BL article puts it far better than I ever could.
Macbeth - ambition
Hamlet - indecision
Othello - jealousy
Lear - ? being old?
Romeo and Juliet - being in love?
Antony and Cleopatra - being in love?
Richard III - ambition?
Julius Caesar - ambition?
Titus Andronicus - being too conventional?
Timon of Athens - being angry?
Coriolanus - being angry?
Wrong!
The problem is that the theory is too simplistic to apply to all the tragedies - even all the great ones. It didn't exist before A C Bradley, who formulated it in 1904.
You can read the book here
We also tend to misunderstand 'fatal' as equating to leading to death, but it doesn't actually mean that in this case. It is concerned with Fate, not fatality.
It cannot be denied that in all the plays fate leads to the leading character's deaths, of course, but so many of the tragedies have characters who try, and fail, to defy Fate.
Romeo
'I defy you stars'
Cassius
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves
Kent:
It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions;
Edmund has an entire speech in I.ii defying the stars and fate.Macbeth:
Stars hide your fires
There are literally dozens of examples.
There is a great deal of discussion related to Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, but Shakespeare didn't read Greek. Although we have absolutely zero evidence that Shakespeare attended school in Stratford, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
Assuming that we are right, he would have attended Grammar school from 1571 - possibly 1582. (This is not the place to discuss the supposition that he would have been withdrawn from school because his father could no longer afford to pay for his education, but the Shakespeare boys would have been educated free.)
During that period the teachers were Simon Hunt (1571-75), Thomas Jenkins (1575-9), John Cottam(1579- 81). All were Roman Catholic. None taught any Greek.
Shakespeare studied, and spoke, exclusively Latin, beginning with Lily's Short Introduction of Grammar.
When Shakespeare joined The Grammar School he would have been taught by an usher - one of the senior boys at the school. If he did stay on beyond the age of 12, this would have been a task he would have undertaken and may be the origin of the apocryphal story that he was a school master (in Lancashire).
His texts were all in Latin and you can find a list here
There is absolutely no evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with Aristotle or his theories of tragedy. It is rather.the fact that scholars have attempted to apply Aristotelian theories to Shakespeare's plays. Poetics wasn't translated into English till 1789 though it was available in Latin, in manuscript and translated via Arabic, in the early medieval period.
A better way of looking at the tragedies is to see that their protagonists are out of their time and place.
Shakespeare is much concerned with the problem of 'aliens' throughout his career and it was a live topic in the London of his time, which doubled in size whilst he was living there. As a trading hub, much of this growth came from outside England and Elizabeth I tried to have aliens removed, unsuccessfully.
Shakespeare is always writing about what's going on around him in the plays, but he rarely makes it explicit. More than one playwright ended up in jail for their theatrical efforts, including Ben Jonson who had a T for Tyburn branded on his thumb to remind him where he'd be if he transgressed again.
"in one way or another, of all Shakespeare’s great tragic protagonists. They are all ‘fools of Time’ (to borrow a phrase from Sonnet 124) in the sense that they are hoodwinked by history." https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/an-introduction-to-shakespearean-tragedy
This BL article puts it far better than I ever could.
Really useful one, compact yet packed with important points.Thank You very much for the effort to make the hard one looks so simple. Further, you can access this site to read Othello’s Tragic Flaw
ReplyDelete