The action of a tragedy should represent a conflict of wills, or of will with circumstance, or will with itself, and should therefore be based on the characters of the persons involved. A typical tragedy is concerned with a great personality engaged in a struggle that ends disastrously.
In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive. This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet "pity and fear" still serve as well as any other terms to describe the emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however, hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror, despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the last century, to prose.
On examination, then, the particulars of the classical tradition have shown extraordinary powers of survival, but not one of them has gone without protest and violation. The thousands of tragedies written during four centuries have all had marked resemblances, and all important developments have preserved relationships to the classical species; yet it is impossible to insist on any one quality of that species as essential, without encountering examples of great tragedies that lack it. The close relationships among these many plays forbid the separation of a few, distinguished by certain qualities, to be named as tragedies, and the rest as something else; and the great variations forbid the confident selection of any qualities as essential in the future development of tragedy. The modern amendments, though represented by nearly universal practice, have not saved the classical tradition, and are themselves coming under question. The plays of Ibsen, which seem to have instituted the most important development in tragedy for two centuries, return to something of the simplicity of action required by Aristotle, and present the struggle of individual wills as did Shakespeare, but are in prose and deal with contemporary bourgeois life,—a combination of relationships to the tradition wholly new. While idealization in some degree must be exercised in tragedy as in all forms of literature, it is impossible, in the light of realistic plays, to maintain that tragic effects can be secured only through the stories of exceptional persons. Tragic greatness, in the sense demanded by the theorists, is, indeed, scarcely more manifest in the persons of "Romeo and Juliet" than in those of "Hedda Gabler." While conflict of some kind is essential to a dramatic action, yet it may evidently be minimized without destroying the artistic impressiveness of suffering and disaster. Even the requirement that tragedy deal with the characters of individual men is being questioned. It is conceivable that plays in the future may, like Hauptmann's "The Weavers," turn from the emotions of the individual to those of a class, or may find their destructive and painful actions in the oppression, disaster, or mere unrest of the mass.
Any precise and compact definition is sure to lack in comprehensiveness and veracity. It cannot sum up the facts of the past and present, much less set rules for the future. We seem forced to reject the possibility of any exact limitations for the dramatic species, to include as tragedies all plays presenting painful or destructive actions, to accept the leading elements of a literary tradition derived from the Greeks as indicating the common bonds between such plays in the past, but to admit that this tradition, while still powerful, is variable, uncertain, and unauthoritative.
But besides this literary tradition there has been a hardly less powerful theatrical tradition. Tragedy has always owed a double allegiance, to literature and to the theatre. A tragedy is a play, not merely a dialogue in poetry or prose, but a play to be interpreted by actors before an audience in a theatre. To these three factors it has had first of all to suit itself. And these factors have constituted conditions and standards, different and not less variable and transient than those of the literary tradition. The plays of Æschylus, of Shakespeare, of Calderon, and of Racine, for example, were planned for widely different conditions, and for conditions also widely different from those now present in the theatres. Excepting Shakespeare's, no English tragedies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, or, one might almost say, nineteenth century, are acted in our theatres to-day. The effect of the acted drama is consequently not only different from that of the drama when read, it is also subject to other and variable artistic standards. It aims at some effects not at all literary and at some likely to be limited by its own day and theatre. A history of tragedy must take into account the differences of the theatre of one nation from that of another, and of one period from another period. It must remember that to those temporary conditions each dramatist necessarily conformed and that by them his achievement was directed. It may find some hostile to the best dramatic art, tending to promote melodramatic rather than tragic effects. It may find others that are divorced from any permanent meaning for the drama or literature. But the fact that such conditions are temporary should not breed contempt, for much great literature has been aimed not at the world or posterity but at the audience of the day. Out of temporary and varying theatrical conditions have arisen the permanent criteria for dramatic excellence.
In fact, the theatre has been a conservative influence, tending to oppose innovation and to maintain the integrity of the form of tragedy. The essentials of its literary form, its length conditioned by the time of the performance, the division into acts, scenes, or parts, and the growing importance of dialogue, have all been dependent on theatrical conditions. The characteristic qualities of national dramas have been in some measure the products of the national theatres, and only through the growing similarity of stage conditions are we likely to attain agreement in regard to the forms of drama. While there have been a multitude of tragedies that have never been acted, and some that have never been intended for acting, the attempt to write tragedy for the closet rather than for the stage has resulted either in adopting the supposed conditions of the Greek or some other foreign theatre, or in breaking away from the strict limits defined by the stage and writing lyrical medleys or dramatic monologues or imaginary conversations. As soon as tragedy has left the theatre, it has reverted to old forms or developed new and strange hybrids. Milton's "Samson Agonistes" and Swinburne's "Bothwell" are tragedies, if you will, but they have no place in the development of a national drama. Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," Browning's "The Ring and the Book," and Landor's "Marcellus and Hannibal" are all dramatic, but they cannot be included in any definition of the species of tragedy. Object as tragedy rightly may at times to the limitations and trivialities of the theatre, it cannot safely leave its precincts without losing its own identity.
In the past nearly all tragedies of any effect on the drama's development have not only been planned for the stage but have succeeded when acted. This seems likely to be the case in the future. For the reader of a play is confronted by difficulties not found in other fiction; and, in general, only a play suited to presentation on the stage is likely to secure for a reader the visualization, the impersonations, the illusion of actuality, similar to those experienced in the theatre. The fact that the drama requires the services of theatre and actors as well as author need not lessen our recognition of the responsibility and opportunities of the one or the other. The stage affords the first test of a play's emotional appeal, and perhaps the best test of its dramatic power. The consummation of tragedy has been attained only when the dramatist has availed himself of all the aids that the theatre has offered.
Thus far our attempt at definition has had to do with what tragedy is or has been or is likely to be, rather than with what it ought to be. The more difficult question has not been shunned by criticism, and perhaps even our brief discussion ought not to omit a consideration of tragedy's function and opportunities. These certainly extend beyond the theatre and include whatever is possible for literature. As a form of literature, tragedy fulfills in general the same functions as other forms, especially as fiction, of which it is one division. It has similar opportunities and its effects are similar in kind. It must be judged by the same standards, by the nature and power of its emotional effect, and by the lasting meaning of its portrayal of life; and the census of the centuries will be necessary to establish its greatness.
Special qualities have, however, been assumed for the emotional effect of tragedy altogether apart from its peculiarities as drama or fiction. A peculiar function, a special effect, differing from other forms of literature, have been ascribed to it. Aristotle declared its effect to be the purging of the emotions, a somewhat obscure expression, surely incorrect if taken in the literal sense that Aristotle seems to have intended, but variously interpreted as referring to moral or æsthetic reactions. Modern theories have too often regarded tragedy as a sort of exposition of the moral law, illustrating the ways of providence. To-day we require of tragedy a probing into human motive, an especial devotion to the study of character under great emotional stress. But has it a special function? Tragedy deals with pain, yet seeks to give us pleasure:—this crux has been greatly emphasized by the false antithesis between pain and pleasure. As a matter of fact, though our knowledge of the æsthetic emotions is scanty, a description of the effect of tragedy is hardly more obscure than that of any other form of literature or of any other of the fine arts. In life we are enormously interested in grief and suffering and disaster, as we are also in joy, pleasure, and success. Our newspapers abound in narratives of both sorts, and so do our novels. We are stirred by the painful emotions of our fellows as readily as by their pleasurable ones. The tragic plays a large part in many forms of literature and in sculpture, music, and painting. And tragedy, dedicated to painful actions, also interests, fascinates, absorbs us. It is not diverting, amusing; it is not for daily food or recreation, but no less it ministers to an active normal human interest.
Does it carry an antidote to offset its demand upon our sympathies? Is there a katharsis that somehow transforms our pity and fear into relief and pleasure? There is something of the sort in the mere exercise of violent emotion, which in a measure carries its own relief and cure. There is something also of egotistical satisfaction, of self-congratulation that comes with the exercise of sympathy, a certain exaltation that virtue has gone out of us. There is something again of æsthetic delight in the artistic mastery which we feel in any great work of art. The harmony of the argument, the splendor of the verse, the grandeur of conception and expression may counterbalance the painfulness of the story. Yet more, tragedy may bring the inspiration of greatness and endurance, of purity and unselfishness of spirit. Its idealization of character, its revelation of beauty and power even in distress and downfall, may bring a reassurance that turns pity to exhilaration. In drama as in life there may come in moments of trial and ruin the visions of the eternities to console and exalt us.