Aristotelian Philosophy and Plays

Aristotelian Philosophy and Plays

According to Aristotelian philosophy a tragedy is a compressed

development of a single plot. Aristotle's principles have been derived

from Greek mythology. He studied their plays, which had been enacted

and hence laid down a set of rules. All playwrights and authors have

followed his rules for centuries his rules have been considered a

guide to a well-written tragedy.

Aristotle states that for a play to be a tragedy the play should

consist of a genre and generic attributes. It should have a

mimesis/imitation for Aristotle all literature was an art of imitation

as artists imitated life to produce their literature the same with the

audience they would try to mime what they had seen heard or read. A

tragedy should have a proportion. It should be complete, serious and

of appropriate magnitude. A tragedy should have a literature function

it should invoke two kinds of emotions that is pity and fear. The

emotional purging is needed. Character construction is needed. Tragic

constructions all have two qualities by which they are judged; the

characters should have the goodness in the moral sense and appropriate

amount of social mores, truth life and consistency. Subcomponents of a

tragic play, they should have six parts plot, character, diction,

thought, spectacle and song. Literature and human nature, according to

Aristotle our qualities are determined by our characters. A perfect

tragedy should imitate a complex action while leading a good man to

misfortune by error this is the tragic flaw.

Completeness of work i.e. unity of work and time the key qualities are

it should have a beginning middle and an end. This should be enough to

move a character from calamity to good fortu...

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...e Spanish tragedy written by

Thomas Kyd is an excellent example of a revenge tragedy. With this

play the Elizabethan Theater revived its first revenge tragedy.

Because of the success of this play the dramatic form had to be

imitated. Seneca was among the greatest authors of classical tragedies

and there was not one educated Elizabethan who was unaware of him and

his plays. There were certain stylistic and different strategically

thoughts and devices those Elizabethan playwrights, including

Shakespeare learned from Seneca.

Looking of the character of Hamlet we can say that his life is a

parallel to Jesus' life as most of the crucial details are evident.

Hamlet does appear as martyr or a Christ live figure in act five scene

2 when he chooses to have a honest leader to rule the state and give

up his own life to rid the state of an evil and undeserving one.