‘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