Knowra Shakespearean tragedy Shakespearean tragedy A tragic dramatic form exemplified by Shakespeare’s plays, in which a protagonist’s downfall unfolds through personal flaws, external pressures, and political conflict.
Tragic hero : A central figure whose downfall gives a tragedy its shape and emotional force. Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists organize the action around a consequential fall.
Hamlet : Shakespeare’s tragedy about a Danish prince seeking to avenge his father’s murder. Its delay, uncertainty, and revenge plot offer a distinctive model of tragic action.
Aristotle’s Poetics : An ancient Greek work that analyzes poetry, including the structure and effects of tragedy. Its account of tragic action provides a classical point of comparison for Shakespeare’s plays.
Greek tragedy : Ancient Greek drama in which human action unfolds under pressures of fate, divine power, and civic order. Its religious and civic framework differs from Shakespeare’s varied, character-centered tragic worlds.
Blank verse : Unrhymed poetry in iambic pentameter, widely used in English drama. Its flexible rhythm lets Shakespeare shift between public rhetoric and intimate speech.
Peripeteia : A reversal in which events turn toward an outcome opposite to what was expected. Shakespearean plots often pivot sharply from apparent security toward ruin.
Macbeth : Shakespeare’s tragedy about a Scottish nobleman whose ambition leads him to seize the crown. Its rapid descent links political violence to private ambition and fear.
Senecan tragedy : A Roman dramatic tradition marked by rhetorical speeches, revenge, violence, and supernatural elements. Its revenge plots and theatrical violence shaped English tragedy before and during Shakespeare’s career.
Jacobean tragedy : English tragedy written during the reign of James I, often marked by violence and moral ambiguity. Later playwrights intensified features that Shakespeare’s tragedies helped establish on the English stage.
Soliloquy : A speech in which a character, alone onstage, voices thoughts or deliberations. Soliloquies make private conflict theatrically audible in plays such as Hamlet and Macbeth.
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