Betrayal and Love William Shakespeare is a famous writer who wrote many plays. Most people would concur he is the greatest writer of all time. His plays fall under the categories of histories, comedies, and tragedies. Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy, but many would say it is not because Troilus does not die. Instead a noble fighter named Hector dies. Betrayal, love, and love causing betrayal is expressed in Troilus and Cressida when Cressida betrays Troilus by not railing against the Greeks, Troilus falling in love with Cressida, and in a way, Paris betraying the Trojans because he would not give up Helen which made the Trojans continue fighting. Cressida betrays Troilus by not resisting going to the Greeks. Troilus expressed his ardent love for Cressida and shows he really loves her. He even asked Pandarus to partake in wooing her by saying “I tell thee I am mad in Cressida’s love”. (Shakespeare 39) He does prevail over Cressida and she even pronounces her love to him. But when Cressida is taken over to the Greeks, she does not fight or struggle, instead it seems like she goes over with no resistance. Troilus feels betrayed that she behaves this way. Troilus falling in love with Cressida is an example of love. Troilus ostensibly falls in love with Cressida, but not for who Cressida really is. In this case, love is blind. Cressida may not really have feelings for Troilus; instead Troilus is going to break his own heart. In this case, he should not fall in love with her because they come from different countries that are at war. Paris betraying the Trojans because he would not give up Helen which made the Trojans keep fighting is an example of love causing betrayal. Many say that Paris is just being selfish for doing this because he incited a war. Helen was Menelaus’ wife so that made him extremely mad and that is what started the war. Some people even believe that was his strategy. If that is true, it was not very smart and made him look like a dolt.
There are many tragedies to be found in literature, but only a few are like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is a story of forbidden love in which a young couple are torn apart by their families’ feud in Renaissance Italy; the play’s tragic ending has both main characters die. Many aspects of this play have sparked a heated debate: is Romeo and Juliet a tragedy or is it simply tragic? Some critics claim that the play lacks elements that are necessary for a tragedy. Yet Aristotle explicitly states the essential components of a tragedy in his Poetics, and Romeo and Juliet meets those requirements. Romeo and Juliet can be considered an Aristotelian tragedy because of Romeo’s impetuousness, Juliet’s loyalty to Romeo, and the play’s peripeteia.
In the book, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships, author Patrick Carnes presents an in- depth study of relationships that are exploitative and can create trauma bonds. Dr. Carnes explores why these relationships form, who is more susceptible, and how bonds become so powerful. In the text he explains how to identify that traumatic bonding is occurring and he provides ways to examine these relationships. Dr. Carnes then provides specific steps to disentangle from these relationships.
Love is often misconstrued as an overwhelming force that characters have very little control over, but only because it is often mistaken for the sum of infatuation and greed. Love and greed tread a blurred line, with grey areas such as lust. In simplest terms, love is selfless and greed is selfish. From the agglomeration of mythological tales, people deduce that love overpowers characters, even that it drives them mad. However, they would be wrong as they would not have analyzed the instances in depth to discern whether or not the said instance revolves around true love. Alone, true love help characters to act with sound reasoning and logic, as shown by the tales of Zeus with his lovers Io and Europa in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.
Tragedies in the Greek theater when compared to tragedies in the Renaissance theater varied in similarities and differences. Greek theater encouraged the use of religious figures while Renaissance theater was supposed to be strictly pagan in its ideologies. Theater was most dominantly used to depict the social and religious constraints of the time period. For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex are both portrayals of deceit, murder, and revenge all of which lead to the demise of its leading characters. Hamlet is depicted as a young man who is seeking revenge for his fathers death. Oedipus is a king who means to free the people of Thebes from a disease that has been plaguing them. They share similarities in that each of their love interest are conduits of their pain and anguish, further pushing the protagonists over the precipice. The voice of reason that they share is Creon in Oedipus Rex and Horatio in Hamlet. Their tragic flaw is that they are both ultimately and utterly doomed and no amount of guidance will steer them away from what has been predestined by fate. They are ultimately doomed to be their own Achilles heel.
Extreme passion results in irrational actions with horrifying consequences. The indecisive and fervent whims regarding love and the human heart are often selfish and fickle. For the victims of love, destruction is often inevitable. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, unrequited love forces both Romeo and Juliet to commit suicide, as neither one believes it is possible to continue life without the other. Both, through mere days of desperation, elation, deception, and grief, were ultimately cheated out of their lives by their love. Shakespeare develops a similar opinion through Helena in A Midsummers Night’s Dream. Helena is able to recognize love as a volatile creature, yet with uncontrollable power over the heart.The transient nature of love is channeled through deception and clouded judgement.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is often referred to as a classic love story. It is a story of love at first sight and fighting between families. The classic is a true tragedy because of the way it is created. Romeo and Juliet is an Aristotelian tragedy because it clearly follows the model shown by Aristotle. All aspects of the plot and characters perfectly follow way Aristotle defined. The plot follows the events that need to occur and the main characters have a flaw. Pity and fear is felt for the characters throughout the play. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is a true Aristotelian tragedy because of the characters, plot, and the fact that it triggers pity and fear.
In The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer uses the visuality of spatial relationships in each shot with the human face and its ability to convey unspoken emotion in his portrayal of the demise of Joan of Arc. Unlike most film, the message is almost entirely told by just the eyes and expressions of the actors. There is very little reliance upon props and background. The camera angles and close-up shooting accentuate emotions and reactions. The editing style is almost methodic in keeping the emotional pace; it is much like an argument, alternating images of Joan’s tenacity, and the judges’ contempt. The artistic elements of the film are found in the subtle elements of the setting in contrast with the story that is realized by looking into Joan’s eyes as she witnesses her lifelong beliefs condemned and destroyed by her martyrdom.
Beginning with the Greeks, tragedy has been an essential form of entertainment. Although it has changed slightly over time due to different religious and social values, it is still written and performed to this day. Perhaps the most well known tragedy of all time is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet is perhaps the epitome of all tragedy. Not only does the tragic hero Hamlet meet his demise, but all the main characters in the play at some point due to some flaw in their character, or some fatal decision, also meet the same fate. It is because of their character flaw and/or their fatal decision at some time during the play that their death can be justified.
William Shakespeare, one of the most inspirational authors, playwrights, and Englishman’s to ever walk the earth. During his time during the 1600's he wrote two great plays. “Shakespeare was prolific, with records of his first plays beginning to appear in 1594, from which time he produced roughly two a year until around 1611” (McDorment”) They share things that are similar but they also disagree with each other quite a bit. What we can really talk about is the two main characters from the two stories. These two stories are Macbeth and Tempest. The two main characters are Macbeth and Prospero. Three things can be compared with these two; they are both the protagonist, they have to do with betrayal, and the tragic loss of something.
When asked to pick two plays of William Shakespeare, I could not help but think of my two favorite plays Othello and Hamlet. These are my favorite plays because in both it can be seen how the protagonist’s downfall was driven by themselves with help of others. For example, Hamlet is acting on instructions from his ghost father, while Othello was being manipulated by Iago. Each protagonist was put in a situation where their tragic flaws not only brought their downfall, but others as well, including their loved ones.
As a tragedy Oedipus the King spends the majority of the play discovering who he is, without knowing exactly what is occurring. The tragedy was that he suffered the improbabilities of murdering his father and then marrying his mother, it is a tail of his revelations about his past, and the events that led him to his ultimate fall. In this play, Sophocles illustrated a world of human frailty, pride, and punishment, which helped to propel, with dreadful inevitability, a protagonist moving toward catastrophe. Oedipus is the direct cause of his own undoing, however it is not because he is evil, proud, or weak, but simply because he does not know his true past or who he is. The facts that he believes to be true are unraveled, thus revealing his fate. Oedipus meets the first criterion of a Greek tragedy, which is that the protagonist is a good person. Oedipus has both a good he...
A tragic play is a combination of dramatic scenes that act out a tragic event and usually labors unhappy endings. The play would usually portray the downfall of the main character. According to Aristotle, “Every Tragedy therefore must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.” Based on Aristotle’s definition, Oedipus and Hamlet are a good examples tragedy. They both have been developed with a strong Plot and Characters. According to Aristotle, Plot is considered to be “the soul of tragedy” and very important in a play. Aristotle also implies Character to be second in line when it comes to developing a successful tragedy.
One might think of a tragedy being a terrible and destructible event in one’s life that causes great pain and may contain great loss. One particular play written by William Shakespeare – one of the most well known poets in history, happens to be a tragedy-filled story. Othello, the Moor of Venice, set during the captivating renaissance era portrays a character named Othello who reveals characteristics of a tragic hero. The brilliant philosopher Aristotle from the fourth century B.C. developed his own definition and idea of what a tragic hero is. Eric Engle, author of “Aristotle, Law and Justice: The Tragic Hero,” said, Due to Aristotle’s influence, his tragic flaw has distorted western thought ever since its conception” (Engle). “The enquiry of whether Othello is a true tragic hero is debatable. Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero was a protagonist who is socially superior to others, but then has a downfall due to a “tragic flaw,” typically caused by the character’s solitary weakness. Due to Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero, Othello possesses the qualities from his definition that fulfill the role of being a tragic hero.
When one hears the word tragedy, one can assume that the human emotions are responsible for the collapse of an individual. To the Greek philosopher Aristotle, however, a tragedy is “an imitation of an action of high importance…in language enhanced by distinct and varying beauties…[or] by means of pity and fear effecting its purgation of these emotions” (Kennedy & Gioia, 945). He defined a tragic hero as having three common characteristics: hamartia, or the tragic flaw in the character which coupled with hubris (pride which results in overconfidence) causes his downfall and demise; katharsis, the purgation of the audience’s emotions, which causes the audience to feel “not depressed, but somehow elated”; and anagnorisis, or the recognition of some fact not previously realized by the true identity of the main character (Kennedy & Gioia, 946). Therefore, as defined by Aristotle’s concept of tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Othello could be classified as a tragic hero. Shakespeare’s play includes jealousy and intrigue, which intertwined with pride and suspense create the finest of Aristotelian tragedies. Othello complies with the requirements for a tragic hero as Aristotle began with the premise that the hero must be of “high estate,” as if he were the member of a royal family; however, he yet falls from a hierarchy of power to one of abashment. He has married the daughter of a Venetian nobleman. He starts out well, but his end is one of drama. Moreover, Shakespeare’s plot develops as Othello’s katharsis is revealed through the climax and conclusion of the play, while the anagnorisis with the recognition that Iago was a traitor and Desdemona his innocent victim.
In 350 B.C.E., a great philosopher wrote out what he thought was the definition of a tragedy. As translated by S.H. Butcher, Aristotle wrote; “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Thought, Diction, Spectacle, Melody. (http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html)” Later in history, William Shakespeare wrote tragedies that epitomized Aristotle’s outline of a tragedy. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one such tragedy.