Macbeth Notes: The Tragic Hero Scribed by Sarah Siddig
Background
-Shakespeare wrote many different kinds of plays, comedies, histories that
examined queens and kings but most favorite plays were tragedies
-A.C Bradley, a literary critic, said that all Shakespearean tragedies. follow a certain
pattern
-When Shakespeare set out to write a tragedy he worked from the Greek tradition of
theater (ancient Greek tradition: earliest recordings of culture)
-Was important to society
-Greek tragedy- performed a social function
-Suppose to watch a hero go through an incredible amount of suffering and feel
those emotions you
-That you would feel better, that this would heal society, create social harmony
-This was called catharsis: to experience strong painful emotions while experiencing
art so as to cleanse yourself of them
-The Greeks did this often
-They did this by making a story with certain characteristics
The Characteristics of a Tragedy
-Tragic hero must be great in character in rank and class
-We have so many stories of the underdog
-But the Greeks were in classes; you had to be of noble birth
-Also had to be seen as admirable, seen as heroic, why call them a hero?
-Shakespeare almost comic as he goes out to call Macbeth, brave, carving
soldiers, figures of this person who is brave and mighty soldier but he also
knows his loyalty to his king
-But also this character the tragic hero must posses a tragic flaw, a weakness in
character, often the flipside of the greatness
-Obviously he can’t be great so he needs something more or he'll be boring
-And often this tragic flaw is the extreme version of the very thing that makes
him great: for example, Romeo and Juliet Romeo was passionate and he was full of
passion and would do anything for love but that same passion is what made him kill
Tybil
-The same passion that leads to him being loved was the same thing that
made him bad.
-The tragic flaw will lead the tragic hero to commit the "act that damns!"
-This flaw in character must be something that commits this act of damns
because the tragic hero has so be seen as responsible for the act that damns
-Who is ultimately responsible for the acts in this play?
-Horror story, gothic tales, the power of the supernatural since the witches
have influenced him
-The tragic hero becomes increasingly isolated
-Because once you commit an evil deed you start to take on evil and that screws up
relationships
-Just seeing the asides Macbeth is his isolation, before becoming thane Macbeth and
Banquet were best buds now Macbeth is becoming more isolated
-The tragic hero will eventually encounter nemesis (arch enemy) and die
-NEMESIS DOES NOT MEAN KARMA <---- emphasized
-Nemesis can be a form of a person "my arch enemy"
-At the end of a tragedy you should feel a sense of wasted potential and grief
"if only"
-Believe that this person could have been great; this comes from the Greeks
because they believed they weren't in control of their lives
-That their lives belonged to the fates
-If you know that the play is called tragedy then a lot of people are going to die