In his 10 tragedies, Shakespeare confronts the driving forces of human nature from hunger for romantic love (like in Romeo and Juliet) to greed for political power (like in Macbeth).
Most of Shakespeare's tragic heroes are based on historical figures. Plutarch's The Lives of Noble Greeks and Latins is the principal source for his Roman plays--Titus Adronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus--and for Timon of Athens, set in ancient Greece. King Lear and Macbeth are set in early Brittain, with protagonists modeled on monarchs documented in Holinshed's Chronicles: Lear was an English king, Macbeth a Scottish one. The Danish prince Amleth, also recorded in chronicles, became the subject of Hamlet, set in Denmark. The two remaining tragedies, Romeo and Juliet and Othello, which unfold in households of Verona and Venice, are based on Italian narrative fictions by Giraldi Cinthio. As a group, the tragedies range in style and structure, from the stricter, Senecan progress of Titus Andronicus, the playwright's earliest surviving tragedy; through the lyrical Romeo and Juliet and soliloquy-rich masterpieces Hamlet and Macbeth; to the pathos of Timon of Athens.
The "Golden Period"
Tragedies figure among Shakespeare's very earliest and latest works, with four written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and six under King James. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's most productive years, known as the "Golden Period," were between 1600 and 1608, during the end of Elizabeth's reign and the first five years of James's rule. He then wrote 10 great plays, six of which are major tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. To explain this exceptional output, some scholars have argued that uncertainty accompanying the trnasition between monarchs prompted the playwright to wrestle with tragic subjects; others point to the changed mood of England, from optimism during Elizabeth's reign, to philosophical inquiry under that of James. Ultimately, Shakespeare's achievement resists any single explanation.
Despite their variety, these plays may be viewed as a group. Tragedies are often contrasted with comedies. While comedies generally resolve conflicts happily, tragedies pursue conflicts to the point where they destroy individuals, families and social orders. Where comedies focus on familial and social continuity, tragedies dilate on the deaths of individuals, and the ruination of their worlds. And just as comedies represent the flexibility of communities adjusting to new values, tragedies portray society as rigid, unable to accomodate strong-willed individuals.
Origins of the Tragedy
As a Western dramatic form, the roots of tragedy reach back to Ancient Greece. The word "tragedy" is built on the Ancient Greek tragos, "goat." Strictly speaking, the tragoidia was a work "singing about" a goat. While the comedy represents life in terms of seasonal renewal and rebirth, the tragedy confronts the animal aspect of the human being who is fated to die. It has been proposed that the tragedy originated in prehistoric rituals in which mammals (such as the goat) served a symbolic role, allowing spectators to identify their own mortality with that of the sacrificial animal. By the 5th century BCE, the tragic outcome of individual action was represented not only in ritual form, but also in drama. Because the tragic hero was an exceptional person with no option but to die, the dramatic outcome aroused feelings of pity and terror in spectators. These Ancient Greek elements remain central to Shakespeare's tragedies.
Shakespearean Tragedy
In Elizabethean and Jacobean theaters, tragedy became a secular form of drama responding to new questions about human existence, those that could not be answered by Christian doctrine or drama from the liturgical tradition. Not surprisingly, Shakespeare set most of his tragedies in pre-Christian periods: without a Christian framework, protagonists are given no ready explanations for their trials. The classical settings of the four Roman plays and Timon of Athens achieve this, because it was believed that Ancient Greeks and Romans had no recourse to a redemptive cosmos explaining human action and death. Even King Lear is set in pre-Christian Britain, with no grand purpose given for Lear's sufferings. Thus, the secular tragedies of the English Renaissance led authors and spectators into uncharted waters, forcing them to look inward, toward a self rite with questions could not be answered by religious beliefs.
The Soliloquy
Nowhere is the secular human quest for understanding so stark in Shakespeare's plays as in the tragic masterpieces: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Aptly, these tragedies employ sophisticated soliloquies, which present characters exploring their thoughts in speech delivered directly to the audience. From the Latin soli ("alone") + loqui ("to speak"), a soliloquy in the strictest sense is a speech delivered by an actor alone on the stage. In late medieval and early Tudor drama, the soliloquy was typically spoken by an evil character, such as a demon or Satan himself. In the morality plays, it was the figure of Vice, the ancestor of Shakespeare's Iago in Othello, who most often spoke in soliloquy to divulge dastardly plots intended to snare innocent Christians. Over time, the soliloquy evolved to capture the more refined reflections and intentions, eventually suiting a wide array of speakers. In Shakespeare's hands, the soliloquy allowed tragic speakers to probe unsettling human doubts and longings. Hamlet, for instance, examines destiny itself in a soliloquy beginning "To be or not to be--that is the question." In Shakespeare's tragedies, up to 10 percent of the staged speech occurs in soliloquy. Densest in soliloquy are Hamlet and Macbeth, where the action of the play progresses in relation to the protagonist's evolving state of mind. The soliloquy in Shakespeare's tragedies often serves as a portal, drawing readers and audiences further into the world of a tragic figure progressing inevitably toward death.
Pinnacles of Dramatic Art
Shakespeare's earliest and latest tragedies, Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens, are rarely performed. Two of his greatest tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, have captured the enthusiasm of directors and audiences only sporadically, often depending on political climates. The remaining tragedies have been widely recognized as literary achievements of the highest order. In the original English and in myriad translations, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth have become works of world literature. Each of these tragedies has secured its own place at once in the imaginations of readers throughout and in the repertoires of theater companies in nearly every region of the globe. Indeed, while these dramas are about the endeavors and fates of specific characters--young lovers of Verona, a Roman leader, a Danish prince, a Moorish general, and Kings of England and Scotland--each explores human fears and desires so deep as to be familiar to readers and audiences across cultures, as well as generations. For some 400 years, these plays have engaged questions about the nature and meaning of universal experiences. For just as long, they have also been subjected to unceasing critical inquiry and commentary. But no amount of analytical investigation or staged interpretation has diminished Shakespeare's monumental tragedies.
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