Tragedy From Aristotles Poetics and Sophocles Oedipus Rex

Tragedy From Aristotle’s Poetics and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus & Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Classical Tragedy 5 th c BCE • Chorus (15 men) • Tragic hero (hamartia, hubris; high station and moral worth) • Catastrophe/reversal; unities • Loses material things but has epiphany/anagnorisis • Catharsis; audiences experience pity & relief

Senecan Tragedy Roman 4 th c BCE-65 • • • Knew in Medieval 5 acts Revenge; bloody No catharsis Fortuna turns wheel to bring high low

Miracle & Mystery Plays (10 th – 14 th centuries) • Miracle plays: lives of saints • Mystery plays: stories from Old and New Testaments • Performed in church as part of holy days • Moved outside onto wagons; guilds performed

Morality Plays (15 th c) • 1 plot • About common people; characters often allegories • Dramatized allegories representing a Christian’s life and his quest for salvation • Show audience that fortune is unpredictable

Medieval Staging • Plays performed in church then moved to courtyard • Mobile, no stage • Used wagons, move episodes from one location to another • Guilds put them on • Symbolic props

Renaissance & Restoration Tragedy • Hero starts good/turns evil • Hero usually important if not ruler • Fall from grace marked by reversals and discoveries • Audience experiences fear and pity; catharsis • Added comic relief and subplots

Traits from Morality Plays in Doctor Faustus • Good and Bad Angel • 7 Deadly Sins • Presence of Lucifer and his cohorts • Vision of Hell • Chorus (1 person) to open the play • Allegory

Origins of Story • Johann Faust (1488) bragged he’d sold his soul to the devil for magical powers. • Wandered Germany until death in 1541 • 1587 story about him appeared in Germany: The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus • Translation in English 1592 • 1592 first performance of Doctor Faustus

Influences on Authorship • Written between 1588 -1592? • Perkins, don at Cambridge, preached about witchcraft because of popular interest in discovery and detection of witches; witchcraft is like “desiring to become a god, longing to win reputation, dissatisfaction with inward gifts received such as knowledge, wit, understanding, memory, and suchlike. ”

Problems with Authorship • Faustus entered official records in 1601 but not as new work. • In 1602 at least 2 others paid for work on Faustus • First published in 1604 • 1616 another version printed • Today’s version based on work of Sir Walter Gregg

Problems with Authorship, cont. • Quality not consistent. • Most believe that Marlowe wrote tragic beginning and end; some that he did most of Acts 1, 3 & 5. • Collaborators wrote much of comical middle sections.

Renaissance authorship • • Patrons; sold to printer or bookseller No royalties; no copyright; pay poor Censored by government and church Printing legal only in London, Cambridge & Oxford UP after passed censorship • 1579 John Stubbs lost his right hand as penalty for attempting to publish pamphlet against proposed French marriage

Patronage • First professional writers; University wits tried to make a living with their writing • Who will be offended? Who will pay? • Theatrical manager Philip Henslowe’s diary is full of entry after entry about university graduates in prison for debt or eking out a miserable existence writing plays.

Authorship/Ownership • 60 % literacy by 1530 • Writing passed by hand, copied pieces they liked in their own commonbooks, often no original author given. • Plays belonged to acting companies, not the playwright. Text changed with actors and situation; dramatists collaborated/changed. • Plays evolved with no printed copy to stabilize the correct text. Ben Jonson first to print play texts--after Marlowe’s death.

Additions to Faust Legend • Connections to witchcraft and Perkins’s motivations for witchcraft from sermons • Ambivalence of Faustus • Thematic elements

Allusions • References to literature, art, music, historical events and people • Why put Faustus in Wittenberg? What famous medieval person is connected with the university in Wittenberg? • Burning chair in Hell; Hungarian peasant rebel Gyorgy Dozsa (1514) • Icarus and Daedalus

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1560) by Peter Breughel the Elder. Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

Allegory • Form of extended metaphor • Characters in a narrative have symbolic meaning as well as literal meaning • Personification of abstract qualities • Example: Everyman is the name of a character in a medieval narrative who goes through the conflicts of the plot, but he also is a symbol for all Christians who struggle through life to find salvation.

Why authors use allegory § To teach moral lessons § To explain universal truths § Marlowe uses these allegorical characters in Faustus: the Good Angel and the Bad Angel. Why? § What function do they serve? § Are they symbols? Of what? § How would they have been presented on stage then? Now?

Another Allegory: The 7 Deadly Sins • • Pride Covetousness Envy Wrath Gluttony Sloth Lechery Which sins does Faustus commit? Why does Marlowe include the 7 Deadlies? Which characters possess these traits?

Why Faustus abandons learning • Philosophy: “…though it has attained that end” (I. i. 10). • Medicine: “Could’st thou make men to live eternally / Or being dead raise them to life again” (I. i. 22 -24). • Law: “Too servile and illiberal for me” (I. i. 34).

Why give up on religion just as he gets his doctorate in theology? • “. . . we must sin, and so consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death” (I. i. 4043). • Syllogism: 2 statements which, if true, make a 3 rd statement true. • Example: Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Faustus’s Syllogism • He has created a syllogism. Is it logical? • “. . . we must sin, and so consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death” (I. i. 40 -43). • What is wrong with his thinking? Why is it ironic?

Logical Fallacy? • Faustus has taken the quote out of context and ignores the rest of the quote which promises mercy for those sinners willing to repent. • The world’s greatest scholar comes to ruin because of faulty research and reasoning; he misreads an important quote from an untrustworthy source.

What to look for as you read § Chorus: What functions does it serve? Appears 4 times: to introduce heroic nature of the play, to foreshadow, to provide exposition, and to identify the setting. § Irony: Look at Faustus’s arguments and thinking. What logical mistakes does the great scholar make?

What else to look for • • Allegory Allusions Comic relief; parallel subplots Ideals/beliefs from Reformation, Medieval Period, and Renaissance; • Beliefs about witchcraft and the devil • Antithesis/contrast

Ask yourself • Is Faustus’s fate predestined or does he have free will? • What is knowledge? • Does Faustus ever find knowledge? • What does Faustus really want? • Can Faustus be both hero and villain? Bad and good? What evidence can you find in the play?

Sources Barnet, Sylvan, ed. “Introduction. ” Doctor Faustus. Christopher Marlowe. New York: Signet Books, 1969. vii-xix. Bevington, David. “General Introduction. ” The Complete Works of Shakespeare. New York: Harper. Collins, 1992. Rpt. in Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show. Ed. Mc. Alindon, T. Twayne’s Masterworks Studies. New York: Twayne, 1994. 152 -170. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Devil May Care. ” New Statesman 131 (1996): 42 -44. Mc. Alindon, T. Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show. Twayne’s Masterworks Studies. New York: Twayne, 994. “The Sixteenth Century I 1485 -1603): Introduction. ” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6 th ed. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. 253 -273. Stenning, Rodney. “The ‘Burning Chair’ in the B-text of Doctor Faustus. ” Notes and Queries 43 (1996): 144 -145. Stumpf, Thomas A. “Images and Music. ” Freshman Seminar: Visits to Hell. (2001). 29 Sept. 2004. <http: //www. unc. edu/courses/2001 fall/engl/006 m/005/thumbnails. html. > Walton, Brenda. Lessons for Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Orlando, FL: Network for Instructional TV, 1998. 12 Oct. 2004. <http: //www. teachersfirst. com/lessons/marl. htm>.