‘Shakespeare is at his best in his tragedies rather than in his comedies.’ Discuss. Although Shakespeare has many comedies in which he displays his talent, his tragedies are arguably more well known today and it is this timeless appeal – amongst other points – which demonstrates that he is indeed at his best in his tragedies. Defining which of Shakespeare’s plays are tragedies, comedies, and histories is highly debated. For instance, King Lear and Macbeth are categorised by the Royal Shakespeare Company as tragedies whereas Richard III is categorised as a history1. Despite this they all based on the same primary source – Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland2 – and so many people would then consider Macbeth to be a history. It is difficult to find a clear himself was educated at a grammar school which employed Oxford Graduates3 and would certainly have studied the works of great thinkers such as Cicero, Quintilian and most notably Aristotle. In his Poetics, which became widely available in 1498, Aristotle discusses tragedy and comedy but the two books written on comedy were lost4, in the remaining work he briefly defines comedy as ‘an imitation of characters of a lower type’ and notes how ‘the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain’5. We do still have Aristotle’s thoughts on tragedy. He poses many features which define tragedy but essentially it is serious; it deals with so called ‘higher’ characters; it makes you feel pity and fear for said characters and finally the plot resolves in a moment of peripeteia. These features are all seen in classic tragedies such as Oedipus Rex and Oresteia, but they are also seen in Shakespeare’s tragedies. The difference between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ characters is heavily debated but it might be fair to say that Kings and military leaders such as Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are obvious ‘higher’ characters. In Macbeth, we focus on the eponymous character who is both a great military hero and later King; we pity and fear for him as his wife manipulates him and he slowly devolves into a tyrant and finally we get catharsis as we see his downfall at the hands of Malcolm and Macduff. A counter example to this is Romeo and Juliet. The titular characters are not Kings but merely star–crossed lovers. This could be seen as an example of why Shakespeare continues to be respected as one of the greatest writers of all time because he is – purposefully or subconsciously – subverting the rules of tragedy. He makes us feel pity not for ‘higher’ characters but two teenagers in love. He does, however, focus on the final moment of peripeteia in which the plot unravels leaving the audience considering the catharsis in how only through death of could the feud be healed. It is possible to analyse hundreds of articles by revered literary critics to see which of Shakespeare’s plays are his best works but perhaps a more effective – and less time consuming – way to gauge the quality of his plays would be to look at their popularity. Not all popular literature is good and there are many books that, despite being revolutionary, did 1
(Royal Shakespeare Company, 2016) (Mabillard, 2000) 3 (Wells, 2015) 4 (Janko, 1987) 5 (Aristotle, c. 330 BCE) 2
‘Shakespeare is at his best in his tragedies rather than in his comedies.’ Discuss. not gain popularity. This furthers the question of how one defines ‘good’. For the purposes of simplicity, I will define it as the antithesis of ‘bad’ or ‘unenjoyable’ and people generally don’t go to see bad or unenjoyable plays. I surveyed eighteen people and asked each of them to name five Shakespeare plays. Although I tried to gather data from a range of ages it turned out that over half of those questioned were between the ages of fifteen and seventeen which is due to my limited set of contacts. I did however ensure that I surveyed people from a range of schools so that they would not be studying the same texts at school.
Results of Survey Of those surveyed all but one named Macbeth and all but three named Romeo and Juliet. Along with Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Titus Andronicus these six tragedies made up just over half of the responses. Contrastingly, although comedies only made up 42% of responses but there were nine different comedies mentioned. This suggests that perhaps none of the comedies have reached the acclaim of Macbeth or Hamlet. This is backed up by the fact that, despite a relatively even split between tragedies and comedies in the plays performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1979 and 2019, the most performed tragedy – Hamlet – made up 20% of tragedies whereas the most performed comedy – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – made up only 12% of all comedies performed6. This select group of tragedies which have been immortalised in the canon does suggest that perhaps not every single one of Shakespeare’s tragedies are of the same quality but those that do are the most well–known, the most timeless and thus perhaps of the best quality. 6
(Royal Shakespeare Company, 2016)
‘Shakespeare is at his best in his tragedies rather than in his comedies.’ Discuss. Tragedies are so timeless because of the features mentioned earlier. Pity, fear and catharsis are emotions which are have as much impact now as they did two and a half millennia ago when Aristotle penned Poetics or four centuries ago when Shakespeare was writing. Contrastingly, comedy is generally situational and just as episodes of Have I Got News For You? and Spitting Image will not be funny to audiences in four hundred years’ time, many of Shakespeare’s comedies do not appeal to a modern audience. This is because jokes do not exist in a vacuum and many referenced events or works that were familiar to the average Jacobean but not to people in the modern day. On top of this plays such as The Taming Of The Shrew and The Merchant Of Venice which spend a good proportion of their time laughing about women or Jewish people do not connect with people in the twenty first century as attitudes have changed towards people of marginalised backgrounds. The comedies that hold up better, such as A Midsummer Night Dream, The Tempest and Twelfth Night, are those that deal with mistaken identity, love and getting lost which – like pity and fear – are universal experiences. However, Shakespeare’s comedies – though perhaps less universally known – have been adapted into popular movie franchises. She’s The Man (2006) places Twelfth Night in an American high school soccer team7 which would be much more familiar to the teen demographic – which the film hoped to attract – than the court of a European Duke so apart from the setting and language used, it can remain relatively faithful to the plot of the play. Even The Taming Of The Shrew was adapted into the teen cult classic 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). These films, despite being based on Shakespeare, use very little of his script and so it is difficult to consider them as works of Shakespeare. On the flip side, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) is generally faithful to the text – with some changes to facilitate the change in setting – but was still able to make $148 million dollars at the box office8 (compared to $53 million for 10 Things I Hate About You and $57 million for She’s The Man). This further emphasises the point that unlike comedies which need to be updated for a modern audience, tragedies have a timeless appeal because they could be seen as altogether better quality plays. Finally, Shakespeare stands out from his contemporaries because unlike others he managed to combine tragedy and comedy not just within his overall oeuvre but in within individual plays. For example, in Macbeth Act 2; Scene 3 there is a moment of what is intended to be 7 8
(Carlin, 2016) Box Office statistics are according to IMDb (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/?ref_=bo_nb_tt_mojologo)
‘Shakespeare is at his best in his tragedies rather than in his comedies.’ Discuss. comic relief where the porter soliloquises on equivocation. It contains many references to seventeenth century current affairs but, depending on the director, can still be played for laughs today. In the same way, both the Tempest and Twelfth Night begin with a shipwreck and with the cast believing their relatives to be dead. This fosters pity and fear for the characters and could be described as tragic. By bending genre Shakespeare is able to subvert the audience’s expectations and allows us to connect to the characters. Overall, although all of Shakespeare’s work has merit, his tragedies are far more timeless and have a wider appeal rather than relying on situational comedy. And because tragedy is so timeless Shakespeare’s tragedies are influenced by the writing of Aristotle and so could be seen as more expertly crafted as Shakespeare had likely studied the art of tragedy in great detail at school. As well as this part of Shakespeare’s skill is the way he bends the lines between tragedy and comedy so that sometimes it can be difficult to categorise which is which.
References Aristotle, c. 330 BCE. Poetics. s.l.:s.n. Carlin, S., 2016. What She's The Man Taught Us About Gender Roles. [Online] Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/03/105874/shes-the-man-10thanniversary-gender-roles [Accessed 21 February 2022]. Janko, R., 1987. Aristotle: Poetics. s.l.:Hackett Publishers. Mabillard, A., 2000. Sources for Richard III. [Online] Available at: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sources/R3sources.html [Accessed 17 February 2022]. Royal Shakespeare Company, 2016. Past RSC Productions. [Online] Available at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/about-us/history/past-rsc-productions [Accessed 21 February 2022]. Royal Shakespeare Company, 2016. Tragedies, Comedies and Histories. [Online] Available at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/tragedies-comedies-histories [Accessed 22 February 2022]. Wells, S., 2015. Let's Talk Shakespeare: Was Shakespeare Educated [Interview] (8 November 2015).