Aristotle emphasizes that the Tragedy should be “expressed in speech made beautiful.” But in the modern age, Tragedies have become realistic, and therefore, the language has become drab and colourless. Another part of Aristotle's definition of Tragedy is that it should be “acted, not narrated.” This also is a bone of contention.

In modernist literature, the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status [13, 78]. Arthur Miller's essay 'Tragedy and the Common Man' exemplifies the modern belief that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings. British playwright Howard Barker has argued strenuously for the rebirth of tragedy in the contemporary theatre, most notably in his volume Arguments for a Theatre. "You emerge from tragedy equipped against lies. After the musical, you're anybody's fool," he observes.[13]

Although the most important American playwrights - Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller - wrote tragedies, the rarity of tragedy in the American theater may be owing in part to a certain form of idealism, often associated with Americans, that man is captain of his fate, a notion exemplified in the plays of Clyde Fitch and George S. Kaufmann. Arthur Miller, however, was a successful writer of American tragic plays, among them The Crucible, All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.

1.2. The last generation as a new representatives of the tragic hero

Tragic hero is the main character in a tragedy who makes an error in his or her actions that leads to his or her downfall. Tragic heroes appear in the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Marston, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Strindberg, and many other writers.

Some common traits characteristic of a tragic protagonist: [10, 117]

· The hero discovers his fate by his own actions, not by things happening to him.

· The hero sees and understands his doom, and that his fate was revealed by his own actions.

· The hero's downfall is understood by Aristotle to arouse pity and fear.

· The hero is physically or spiritually wounded by his experiences, often resulting in his death.

· A tragic hero is often of noble birth, or rises to noble standing (King Arthur, Okonkwo, the main character in Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart.)

· The hero learns something from his/her mistake.

· The hero is faced with a serious decision.

· The suffering of the hero is meaningful.

· There may sometimes be supernatural involvement (in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar is warned of his death via Calpurnia's vision and Brutus is warned of his impending death by the ghost of Caesar).

· The Shakespearean tragic hero dies at some point in the story, for example Macbeth. Shakespeare's characters illustrate that tragic heroes are neither fully good nor fully evil. Through the development of the plot a hero's mistakes, rather than his quintessential goodness or evil, lead to his tragic downfall.

· The hero of classical tragedies is almost universally male. Later tragedies (like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) introduced the female tragic hero. Portrayals of female tragic heroes are notable because they are rare.

Famous tragic heroes

Macbeth is the main character in Shakespeare's Macbeth (1607?). The character was based upon accounts found in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of Britain. Macbeth is a Scottish noble and a valiant military man. At the urging of his wife, he commits regicide and becomes King of Scotland. He thereafter lives in anxiety and fear, unable to rest or to trust his nobles. He leads a reign of terror until defeated by the rightful heir to the throne in the final act.

Othello is a character in Shakespeare's Othello (c.1601-1604). The character's origin is traced to the tale, "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. There, he is simply referred to as the Moor.

Othello is a brave and competent soldier of advanced years and Moorish background in the service of the Venetian Republic. He elopes with Desdemona, the beautiful daughter of a respected Venetian senator. After being deployed to Cyprus, Othello is manipulated by his ensign, Iago, into believing Desdemona is an adultress. Othello murders her before killing himself.

Othello was first mentioned in a Revels account of 1604 when the play was performed on November 1 at Whitehall Palace with Richard Burbage almost certainly Othello's first interpreter. Modern notable performers of the role include Paul Robeson, Orson Welles, Richard Burton, James Earl Jones, and Laurence Olivier.

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606, and is considered one of his greatest works. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman king. It has been widely adapted for stage and screen, with the part of Lear being played by many of the world's most accomplished actors.

There are two distinct versions of the play: The True Chronicle of the History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters, which appeared in quarto in 1608, and The Tragedy of King Lear, which appeared in the First Folio in 1623, a more theatrical version. The two texts are commonly printed in a conflated version, although many modern editors have argued that each version has its individual integrity.[1]

After the Restoration the play was often modified by theatre practitioners who disliked its dark and depressing tone, but since the 19th century it has been regarded as one of Shakespeare's supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the nature of human suffering and kinship.

Oedipus (pronounced /??d?p?s/ in American English or /?i?d?p?s/ in British English; Greek: ???????? Oidipous meaning "swollen-footed") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family. This legend has been retold in many versions, and was used by Sigmund Freud to name the Oedipus complex.

Marcus Junius Brutus (85-42 BC) or Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, often referred to simply as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic. He is best known in modern times for taking a leading role in the assassination conspiracy against Julius Caesar in an attempt to take control of the Republic.[1]

Prince Hamlet is the protagonist in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of the previous King of Denmark, Old Hamlet. Throughout the play he struggles with whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Claudius, Polonius, Laertes and his two childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He is also indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia (drowning) and of his mother Gertrude (poisoned by mistake). Hamlet himself is the final character to die in the play.

Antigone (pronounced /?n?t???ni/; Greek ????????) is the name of two different women in Greek mythology. The name may be taken to mean "unbending", coming from "anti-" (against, opposed to) and "-gon / -gony" (corner, bend, angle; ex: polygon), but has also been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood" or "in place of a mother" based from the root gone, "that which generates" (related: gonos, "-gony"; seed, semen).

Romeo Montague is one of the fictional protagonists in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He is the heir of the Montague family of Verona, and falls in love and dies with Juliet Capulet, the daughter of the Capulet house.

Juliet Capulet is one of the title characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The story has a long history that precedes Shakespeare himself. The heroine's name was Giulietta in some earlier versions. It had become Juliet by the time Arthur Brooke wrote his narrative poem. Juliet is the beautiful daughter of a generous and very wealthy family in Verona, headed by Lord and Lady Capulet. She was their oldest child. She apparently had younger siblings at some point, but by the time of the play, she was their only surviving child. Juliet is the sole heir to the Capulets. As a child, she was cared for by her Nurse, who is now her confidante, or Juliet's caretaker. As the story occurs, Juliet is approaching her fourteenth birthday (her sixteenth in Arthur Brooke's poem). She was born on "Lammas Eve at night," so Juliet's birthday is July 31 (1.3.19). Her birthday is "a fortnight hence", putting the action of the play in mid-July (1.3.17).

Shakespeare's Juliet was very young; her father states that she "hath not seen the change of fourteen years" (1.2.9). In many cultures and time periods, women did and do marry and bear children at such a young age. However, in Shakespeare's England, most women were at least 21 before they did so. Romeo and Juliet is a play about Italian families. The average English playgoer in Shakespeare's audience had never met an Italian person, and it was commonly thought that they were quite exotic, the Italian male passionate and emotional, and the Italian female precocious and quite ready to become a mother by thirteen. Lady Capulet had given birth to Juliet by the time she had reached Juliet's age: "By my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid" (1.3.74-75).

The play celebrates youth while pointing out its impulsiveness, passion, and idealism; qualities which contribute to the tragedy. The adolescent infatuation of the lovers becomes elevated to the status of sacred love. The sacred lovers were reunited on the same deathbed. Their families had both realized what they had done by separating the two unborn star crossed lovers. The Capulets and Montagues were reunited and their fighting discontinued. [21, 132].

In Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles (pronounced /?h?r?kli?z/ HER-?-kleez) meaning "glory of Hera", or "Glorious through Hera" Alcides or Alcaeus (original name) ("??? + ?????, ???????)" was a divine hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson (and half-brother) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman Emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.

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