Modern World Drama Tanisha Bisht Skg162e0131
BA English
Term paper
“Tragedy is then not a single and permanent kind of fact..Rather the varieties of tragic experience are to be interpreted by reference to the changing conventions and institutions” (Raymond Williams). Critically explore any two plays from the European tradition with reference to this statement.
Raymond William was born in 1921 in Wales. He was one of the most influential figure among post-war historians, theorists, novelists and critiques. He is a very well known Marxist theorist and the author of many works, his most notable work is “Modern Tragedy”.
His concept of tragedy is highly philosophical. In this essay he has discussed various ideas and ideologies that influence tragedy. William believes in these centuries, the word ‘tragedy’ has not changed but it’s dramatic form has gone beneath many changes. It is important to understand tradition to comprehend modern tragedy. According to him culture, society and experiences are directly connected to the tragedy. He believes that tragedy is not about death and suffering and any response to it rather it is a particular kind of event and a particular kind of response to the event that is tragic. The convention of tragedy is different in every age and it would be wrong if we look at present in the light of past and past in the light of present. The conventional principles of tragedy has always been a subject to vary because they do not meet present forces. Tragedy originates from Greek culture and it primarily focuses on forces like Fate, Gods, Suffering and
Chances. The hero must be the agent of his own destruction and his actions must bring reversal, recognition and catharsis. Chorus used to be the one of the most vital component of Greek tragedy but when the Greek culture changed and with the historical development it was rejected. With the rejection of chorus tragedy lost its unique meaning. He says that with time concepts and things change. During middle age, supernatural forces are replaced by circumstantial forces. The protagonist is now coiled in social turbulence. He is no more under supernatural forces. The tragic actions shifts from “happiness to misery” to “prosperity to adversity”. In the renaissance period, tragedy was subjected to own faults and desires and the fall of a famous men. William holds that all drama after renaissance is secular. In the history of tragedy, Shakespeare presented a new kind of tragedy as named as Secular drama. In neoclassical era, there was a special emphasis on ‘dignity’. Dignity of a man is judged by the parameters like style, language etc but by the end of the era behaviour of a person became more important. The real spirit of tragedy was moral and the component of pity and fear were replaced by admiration. The tragic experiences of every age is unique. Modern age or men and it’s suffering are very complicated and it would be wrong to interpret his tragic experience in the light of conventional concepts. William says that it is impossible to have a permanent theory of tragedy because human nature is not permanent and it changes with time. That is why he said that “Tragedy is then not a single and permanent kind of fact.. Rather the varieties of tragic experience are to be interpreted by reference to the changing conventions and institutions.”
The plays from modern European tradition I choose to look are “Miss Julie” by August Strindberg (1888) and “Mother Courage and Her Children” by Bertolt Brecht (1939). Both plays were written in different time periods and different social and political backgrounds. The play
Miss Julie is a part of realistic tradition and on the other hand play Mother courage and her children is the greatest anti-war play of all the time. In the preface of Miss Julie, Strindberg has notified us that he has modernised the form of his drama according to the demands of contemporary audience and in Mother courage, Brecht rejected the conventional idea of tragedy and made it more rational by diffusing audience attention. Miss Julie is a mixture of old and new rising and falling, higher and lower, man and woman while Mother courage is about alienation of men from subjectivity and external world. Brecht is also inviting audience attention on his dramatic form. The protagonist Julie is suffering from guilt and she believes in illusions that class differences can be transcended without realising she is exercising power in a domain that doesn’t belong to her, Strindberg made his audience to sympathies with Julie but Brecht doesn’t want us to sympathies with Mother courage because she is wrong for not understanding the situations, she wants to save her children by feeding on war but instead she looses all of them and he does not want create emotional impact on audience. His narrative style is called Epic Theatre, it is not a subjective work focused on the doings of a hero rather it is an objective work. He reverses are our tradition way of morality and thinking. In his theatre, everyone fights for survival and there is no space for ideals and morals. The contradiction between instinctive will and rational will can be seen in his plays, the instinctive will, will say to do something good and the rational will, will ask to survive. If we do something good we will die so instinctive will is our enemy. He invites us to see what happens to good characters in a bad society. There are of course good characters but when you tempt to do good, it is a threat to your life. If you do good you will die. In Brechtian world this order is reversed. Miss Julie is a naturalistic tragedy but Mother courage is anti play that openly rejects all traditions of conventional theatre. Mother
courage is fighting, she is not helpless like other characters of natural tragedy(like Julie). She is fighting for survival and it shows the struggle of an individual that they have become a part of a system and their weakness is they can’t change the system. They can only fight. In Miss Julie we can see characters like Kristine overflowing with religion and morality to cover for sins but in Brechtian theatre of you believe in Bible world you would not be saved or die. Stupidity in his world is honesty. By reversing conventional forms he is tempting people to think above the situation. Traditional tragedy enforced thinking from within. The war and historical events are metaphors. Miss Julie is a nineteenth century play while Mother Courage and Her Children is a twentieth century play, according to William “The tragic experience of every age is unique”. Earlier “heroic idea” of the protagonist is very popular but as we come closer to the twentieth century this idea got diminished because it was believed that heroism is possible when there is believe since the environment changed so drastically there is no place left for believe. During that point of time Western world was facing extreme alienation so post 2nd world war “Theatre of Absurd” comes in to explain what happens when human life has no existence and purpose. The dramatic form of tragedy is changing with time. Absurd drama rejects all the conventions of Theatre and therefore can be called anti play. It is very irrational and unconventional in nature. It goes beyond the stage and enters the mind of people. It is absolutely fragmented with no unity in time, place and action unlike any traditional drama. Due to that, no logical meaning can be derived. Actors disassociate with characters and there is gap between them. Characters are extremely unified and sometimes they lack names or misnamed. The language of Absurd drama constantly shift tones and sometimes multiple tones can be emerged from a single person. In any conventional text, characters are defined by tones but in Absurd theatre it is totally opposite.
Absurd theatre is used as a mean to represent irrational violence. It is an attempt to represent something new that has not happened before. Each play has a distinctive kind of archetypal absurdity. Absurdity is represented in different ways and forms. The entire action of Miss Julie takes place in one continuous time period while Mother courage is fragmented. Brecht is more interested in system more than individual and he wants to show how capitalism function and crushes the lives of ordinary people and Strindberg is showing the antithetical individuals trapped in the conflict of social conventions (Jean wants to move up and Julie steps down). They are the conglomerates of past and present ages of culture. Brecht doesn’t use symbolism with no audios and unrealistic songs. In the play he has represented industrialist and capitalists as faceless men and with no identity. In his essay “Tragedy and contemporary idea” William has discussed death as a universal character of tragedy. Death in tragedy gives real meaning to the life. It is not an individual loss. When a man dies he alters the life of other people as well. And death is the only factor that has not gone under change in all these centuries, it is common in all tragedies.
Therefore, it is clear with above mentioned details that the meaning of tragedy for both the writers differs from one another. There are various factors that influence tragedy like time, culture, social and political climate etc. due to which conventions of tragedy is different in every age. In the words of Hegel Hegelian, “The modern tragedy is wholly personal and our interest is direct not to the abstract ethical values but to the individual and his condition”. Classical tragedies were about noble men with one unified plot but modern tragedy features ordinary people and their problems and it may have multiple plots” With time our conception of tragedy has changed since human nature is constantly changing. The tragic experience of both the plays
are different because with time conventions change which give birth to the new form of tragedy. Hence, tragedy is not a permanent kind of fact and it keeps on changing.
Works cited :-
1.) Williams, Raymond. Modern Tragedy. Vintage Digital,2013