This video was sponsored
by Campfire Blaze! <i>If only I'd realized sooner,
so many lives could have been spared!</i> (Impact followed by falling glass) The Dionysia was a multi-day festival,
held once a year in ancient Athens. And yes I promise, you didn't misclick!
This is still a trope talk. Possibly established by noted
Dionysus-loving tyrant Pisistratus, most of the Dionysia was dedicated- -to a theatrical competition that
spanned at least three days. Playwrights would show off
their work with- -the performance of a three-part
dramatic tragedy, followed by a more lighthearted
and comedic satyr play- -to cheer everyone up with
dick jokes and prop humour- -after three days of heavy bad feels. This is, nominally, the origin of tragedy
as we define it nowadays. Those Greek plays performed
during the Dionysia- -were the first recorded tragic
narratives we have. Only a few Greek tragedies have
survived to the modern day; Most notably Aeschylus' Oresteia,
Sophocles's Oedipus trilogy, and quite a lot of stuff
written by Euripides. Conveniently I actually have
videos about a lot of these plays, so I'm not gonna go too in depth
in the summary here. And besides, the structure of the original
Greek tragedy is much more interesting. So Greek tragedies were partially sung,
and the cast was split between- -the dramatic players, the characters in
the actual story- -who respected the fourth wall- -and never broke from the narrative
to acknowledge the audience; and the chorus, a group of somewhere
between twelve and fifty masked men- -playing a strange liminal role
in the storytelling. The chorus's primary role was to discuss
the story in meta terms, including addressing the audience, explaining the context for what
was happening, commenting on the events of the story, and occasionally engaging with
the dramatic players, who sometimes responded them, but sometimes couldn't seem
to see or hear them. So essentially you had the
dramatic players doing- -the actual play, the chorus commenting on the story
while occasionally dipping into the plot, and the audience watching it all play out
from behind the fourth wall. Structurally, the plot of most Greek
tragedies had some very common themes, Which Aristotle handily laid out for us
in his "Poetics". Most Greek tragedies start with a hero
of great status or prosperity; wealth, royalty, political power,
whatever the reason- -the hero's on top of the world. For instance in "Oedipus Rex",
the archetypical Greek tragedy, Oedipus is king of Thebes with a beautiful
wife and several children, now there's a guy who's got
his life sorted out! Good thing there's no dramatic
irony on the way! Now this rule is actually the most
flexible of the bunch, because it doesn't even apply to all the
plays Aristotle had to work from. Sophocles's "Antigone", for instance,
begins with Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta,
defying a royal edict- -to go and bury her brother's bodies
after they died fighting each other- -in a Theban civil war,
partially brought on by- -the unsettling reveal at the end of
Oedipus Rex. Antigone might be royalty, but she's pretty far from great status
or prosperity at this point. You could make an argument that the
antagonistic "King Creon" fills the role- -of tragic hero in this story, since he
starts off as king- -and ends up responsible for
his own downfall, but the play is not named "Creon", so... Anyway, the hero of negotiable status
and prosperity is all well and good, but the next key ingredient is that the
hero has a fatal flaw. Some inherent character trait that doesn't
change over the course of the narrative. This trait was referred to as "Hamartia",
roughly meaning "The Sin". In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus's hamartia
is stubbornness. He can't be persuaded to stop searching
for answers about why- -his kingdom is ravaged by plague. The character's fatal flaw ends up causing
a reversal of fortune, or "Peripeteia", when their hamartia leads them to doing
or discovering something terrible- -that changes the trajectory of the story. This reversal of fortune is an inevitable
consequence of their fatal flaw, and equally inevitable is the consequences
of the peripeteia, where our hero falls from prosperity. Again in Oedipus Rex, Oedipus's desire
for answers leads him to the horrrible- -revelation that he unknowingly killed
his own father- -and married his biological mother, and this crime against nature is what's
been causing misfortune in Thebes. In the end the character loses the
enviable situation they had- -at the beginning of the story,
and usually dies, leading to a slow wrap-up and a
denouement, and very importantly, the audience
experiences catharsis when this happens. Now catharsis isn't always a good feeling,
but it's satisfying in some way, the story comes to a close and- the audience leaves feeling satisfied
on some level. Even if they're not happy about anything
that actually happened. Oedipus Rex doesn't have anything
resembling a happy ending, but damn if it doesn't tie up all those
loose ends into a nice little bow- -which is coincidentally, also what it did
to Oedipus's family tree. So Greek tragedies usually build off of
these four story beats; character is in a good place,
character has a flaw, the hamartia- -that causes the reversal of fortune,
the peripeteia, character experiences inevitable downfall,
curtain falls. But thanks to the narration of the chorus, and the semi-permeability
of the fourth wall, there's another sneaky key element in
Greek tragedy, which is the third-person
omniscient audience. The audience of a Greek tragedy gets to
see everything that's going on, and the chorus usually fills them in on
the things they don't already know about. This isn't 100% applicable, for instance, Oedipus Rex is actually kind
of a mystery on top of being a tragedy, since the whole plot is Oedipus looking- -for the man responsible for his kingdom's
bad vibes. And he doesn't learn he's
the culprit until- -20% of the way into the story- -when the soothsayer Tiresias tells him
it's his own fault on line 350. So yeah for most of the story the audience
basically knows where this is going, and even before we know Oedipus is the
culprit, we know that Tiresias- -doesn't wanna tell him who
the culprit is- -because it won't help,
and it'll be really bad for him. So for most of the runtime the audience
has an omniscient perspective- -on the story, telling us what everyone's
doing, what everyone's motives are, and broadly what's about to happen;
Though not necessarily- -everything that happened before the
events of the play, preserving some of the mystery. There's no sudden twists or
shocking swerves here. In a greek tragedy everything is slow,
but inevitable. The audience knows what's coming, so it's
not a question of- -if we're going to get there,
but when and how. So we see Oedipus slowly putting the
pieces together, and we already know the broad outline
of the picture it's going to form, because we're given all the information
we need to get the general gist. Oedipus is going to realize that
somehow, this is his own fault. This audience angle is, I think,
the most important part of tragedy. The audience needs to see the tragedy
coming so we get that sense of dread. It's like the Hitchcockian definition
of suspense- -I talked about in the plot twists video. If suddenly a bomb goes off,
the audience is shocked for a few seconds, but if we're told ten minutes in advance
that a bomb <i>will</i> go off, we have ten whole minutes
of building dread. Tragedies thrive on this; If suddenly everything goes wrong and the
peripeteia and the fortune reverses, we're upset for about however long
that scene lasts. But if we get the hamartia, we see the
stage set, we recognise how- -this character's fatal flaw is going to
clash with their circumstances- -and trigger the reversal of fortune, we're dreading it every step of the way! The most important part of the tragedy
is the dread, not the surprise. And unsurprisingly, this key trait shows up a lot
in the next big wave of tragedies. After Greek tragedies kind of faded out
of focus when Rome took center stage, there was a small sprinkling of tragedies
in the next millenium-and-a-half, Roman stoic Seneca wrote a
handful of roman tragedies- -about classic Greek tragic heroes, but it seems the later Christianization
of the region kinda pulled the focus away- -from these sad stories about icky pagans. There was very little tragic action until
the late 1500s, when playwrights started
taking a retroactive interest- -in the great classics. For a few decades, Elizabethan audiences
saw a surge in revenge plays, stories when a wronged party wreaks bloody
vengeance on the wrongdoers. Until they were entirely out-competed by
the bard himself, Shakespeare. Now our boy Shakespeare wrote a
bunch of tragedies, most of which I've conveniently covered
on this channel- -although I can't in good conscience
recommend those videos- -because it was years ago and the video
quality causes me physical pain, but you can check out Blue's
"History Maker" video on the subject, which is still very good. But anyway, I know this might be a bit
of a hot take, but Shakespeare was <i>really</i>
good at his job. And his tragedies follow the Greek tragedy
format quite closely. He didn't incorporate the chorus, but to
make up for their absence- -his characters would sometimes turn to
the audience- -and soliloquize at them directly to make
sure they were up to speed. This is a very very important addition
that really had an impact, so once again, Shakespeare;
good at his job. Most of his heroes started off in
positions of great prosperity, young nobility, royalty, warrior heroes,
et cetera. They all had solidly established
characters and character flaws, those flaws led directly to their
reversals of fortune, and the body counts got pretty insane! Romeo and Juliet is probably the most
famous tragedy he ever wrote. And he tells us right out the gate what's
about to happen: "A pair of star-cross'd lovers take
their life;" we're not wondering <i>if</i> Romeo and Juliet
are gonna make it out okay, we're waiting to see how this all
goes so wrong. The inevitability of the
tragedy is baked in. And the funny thing about Romeo and Juliet
is before Mercutio dies - - spoiler alert - - the play is a bog-standard
Elizabethan romance; Two beautiful young people in love,
comic relief side-characters, hilariously unreasonable parents, even a couple extra love interests for
our two heroes- -who will probably end up as
paired spares in the end. But the fatal flaws don't let that happen. The reversal of fortune hits just before
the mid-point of the play and- -every character quirk leading up to it
is perfectly foreshadowed. Romeo's a diehard Romantic who walks
on clouds whenever he's in love, Mercutio's a prideful cynic with a very
snarky attitude, and Tybalt is a hot-headed arrogant
dickhead, who represents- -all of the dumbest parts of the
familial feud. Act three, scene one opens, and Romeo- -walking on sunshine thanks to his secret
marriage to Juliet- greets Tybalt in a very friendly way,
which weirds out both- -Tybalt, and Mercutio, who think
he's being a wuss. Tybalt gets angry and challenges him, but obviously Romeo is too
love-happy to fight his own new-family, and then Mercutio gets mad at Romeo for
backing down and- -draws to fight Tybalt instead. During the fight, Romeo intercedes to try
and get them to stop, because of corse he doesn't want
anyone to fight. And that's where Tybalt stabs Mercutio,
realizes he might have goofed, and runs. Mercutio, ever theatrical, monologues all
the way to his grave, and his friends don't seem to realise he's
serious until he's actually dead. Yeah, the comic relief character dies! Holy shit, right? In modern rom-com contexts, that'd be like
if the asshole boss- -shot the gay best friend halfway
through the movie. Romeo curses his own fatal flaw for
letting this happen, his love for Juliet held him back from
taking this seriously- -and allowed his best friend to die. When Tybalt returns, Romeo kills him, and
with that turning point out of the way, it is officially all downhill from here. And this is actually a good example of
something very brilliant- -that Shakespeare did, he added one
interesting twist to the genre that- -gave his plays something really special: Collateral damage. See, in the OG Greek tragedies,
almost all the focus was- -on the tragic hero, and their
immediate loved ones. Oedipus learns the horrible truth and
gouges out his eyes, Jocasta kills herself in shame, and their children have to grapple with
the fact that they're all- -half siblings with their own dad. But they're all central to the tragedy
since the tragedy is <i>about</i> their- -messed up family line, the audience knows what's coming for them. The tragedy is a very simple straight line
on paper. Once Oedipus pieces it together, we may
not know exactly how they're gonna react, but we know it's not gonna be good. In Shakespeare's tragedies, while we know
they are going to be tragedies, they also give us a fairly large secondary
cast of characters- -who are tangential to the main tragedy, And how they're affected is
almost completely unpredictable. This means a Shakespearean audience only
has a <i>near</i>-omniscient perspective While we can still predict the general
structure of the downfall- -and identify the fatal flaw that'll
cause it, we can still be blindsided by how it
impacts the secondary characters. In Hamlet, we know right out the gate that
Hamlet has to avenge his father's murder, but overthinks everything way too much,
so it's gonna take a while. He's indecisive to a fault and lets quite
a lot of opportunities pass him by- -while he complains and monologues. But we know that eventually, he'll kill
claudius and the play will be over. What we don't expect is Ophelia, while
Hamlet's tearing around the castle- -muttering to himself and yelling about
how everybody sucks, his love interest Ophelia
fully goes insane, because Hamlet treats her like sh*t,
and also murders her father. So she stumbles on stage, singing
inappropriate songs- -and handing out flowers to everyone,
before going off and dying off-stage. Ophelia's death is the only time the story
goes out of it's way to show us that- Hamlet's constant dithering has
actual consequences. Monologuing is not a victimless crime, the tragedy is actively ruining the
lives of everyone it touches, God damn! Romeo and Juliet does the same thing
with Mercutio, the audience could see that
Romeo and Juliet's- -familial shenanigans were inevitably
going to lead to problems, but Mercutio was tangential to all that
and didn't have to die. Shakespeare's tragedies have central
structures that are- -very simple hamartia-peripeteia-
reversal of fortune dealios, but they also hit us with unexpected
side-tragedies, where the main tragedy inadvertently hurts
the secondary characters in ways- -we couldn't see coming, and that
didn't need to happen. And this is brilliant! Because it shows us a side to the tragedy
that's almost more tragic. The inevitability of the core tragedy is
very important, because it gives us that sense of
anticipatory dread, but that- -surprise kick of collateral damage
helps drive home the broader- -meta-tragedy that this unfortunate
situation is going to hurt- -a lot of people who don't
deserve it at all. Greek tragedies featured collateral damage
but they didn't focus on it. Oedipus's children didn't deserve any of
the stuff that happened to them, but they don't really get any focus until
Antigone gets her own plays. Collateral damage that surprises the
core tragic players just as much- -as it surprises the audience is that
Shakespeare secret ingredient- -that sets his plays apart from the
Greek tragedies they drew on. And that's not the only rule of tragedy
Shakespeare breaks! On top of collateral damage, his tragic
protagonists sometimes- -undergo character development, which is
usually kind of a no-no, since in order to keep that
downfall inevitable, the hero's fatal flaw can't really change. Lady MacBeth's fatal flaw initially
appears to be power-hunger, and Macbeth's, cowardice, since she is super on board with the whole
"kill the king" thing and he's really not, even though he kinda wants to anyway. But then it turns out Lady MacBeth's- -murder eyes are bigger than her
murder-stomach- and she gives herself crazy PTSD from all
the murdering, and meanwhile- Macbeth gets over his cowardice and- -goes into full power-mad
Disney villain territory. Watching their mental states deteriorate
is another angle of the tragedy, by killing the king, they destroy
themselves psychologically, and orchestrate their own
inevitable downfall. It's pretty harrowing. Now roughly simultaneous with Shakespeare, tragedy was taking another leap forward in
a totally different direction- -with the invention of opera. Italian composer Jacopo Peri, also known
by the frankly ridiculous pseudonym- -"Il Zazzerino", was intrigued by the song aspect of Greek
theater and expanded on that concept- -to write the first Opera, "Dafne", as well as the first surviving opera,
"Euridice". Now I''ll admit, I am not the biggest
opera expert, but in the immortal words of well-known
trickster deity Bugs Bunny: "What'd you expect from an opera,
a happy ending?" Opera is notorious for being a
huge downer, and as another descendant of Greek tragedy
it's inherited a lot of the core traits. The lineage of Greek tragedy is still
going strong, and despite some pretty inexplicable
rumors to the contrary, tragedy has survived to the modern day
as a popular story format. Modern tragedy plays pretty close to the
basic rules of the original Greek tragedies. The hero starting out in a good place
is still very negotiable, but the rest of the structure is
holding strong. The hero has a fatal flaw, the fatal flaw
causes their downfall- -by triggering the reversal of fortune, the hero falls and/or dies, and
the audience gets some tasty catharsis. The audience sees the tragedy coming from
basically minute one, giving them a sense of mounting dread
with the awareness- -that there is no way this story will
end well. Now while I'd hesitate to call
1949 "modern", the 1949 play "Death of a Salesman"
is pretty much the go-to example- -for a modern tragedy these days. And it's an interesting case, because its
creator, Arthur Miller, was deliberately trying to break some of
the rules of tragedy. Specifically the first one, where the hero needs to have a lot to lose
over the course of the play. Far from Shakespearean nobility, the
protagonist of Death of a Salesman- -is the aging, unsuccessful salesman
"Willy Loman", who spends the play obsessed with his
American dream of being the #1 salesman, and dismissing every other possible
world-view as a waste of time- -or an excuse for failure. He's purposefully written as an extremely
mundane everyman, and his ultimate fatal flaw is his- -absolute unwillingness to accept his
own mediocrity. In the hardest hitting line of the play
his son Biff, the closest thing the story has to an
actual hero, tells his father
"I am a dime a dozen, and so are you", in a tragic plea to get his father to
understand that chasing exceptionalism- -and constantly inflating his own
self-image has kept him from ever- -having an actual life that could
make him happy. The ultimate tragedy of the story is that- -Willy can't accept what he really has and
who he really is, it's a very small, uncomfortably mundane
tragedy, which makes it much sadder- -than the more dramatic tragedies of the
downfalls of kings. Death of a Salesman is scarily relatable. Everything about it is
painfully plausible, and the mediocrity of it all just enhances
the tragedy. When the eponymous salesman
eventually dies for- stupid, preventable reasons, that he was
explicitly told wouldn't work out for him, the only people who care are the family
members who were so caught up- -in his world-view they'd become trapped
in his cycle of self-delusion. The ultimate tragedy of this story is how
small it is. Similar to how Shakespeare recognized- -that collateral damage is its
own form of tragedy, Miller recognized that everyday, mundane
despair and delusion- -is also a form of tragedy, and dropping it into a classical tragedy
makes it twice as tragic. At least when Hamlet's life fell apart
he got a cool swordfight out of it. The basic structure of tragedy is that
the character's fatal flaw- -causes their downfall and the audience
can see it coming, but beyond those core rules almost
anything goes. The tragic hero doesn't need to be hugely
successful or powerful, they don't need to learn any lessons, and if you're willing to really depress
your audience- -you don't even need that catharsis factor
for the ending. So modern tragedies sometimes break the
Aristotelian mold- -without losing what actually makes
them tragedies, and regularly supplement the core
structure- -with non-traditional tropes
to spice up the tragedy. But even at their most basic and
by-the-book, tragedies aren't quite as simple
as they look, for one thing, a tragedy is usually only a
tragedy from one character's perspective. Since the tragedy typically centers on the
tragic hero, they are the character whose
perspective we follow. We see their flaw, we see their downfall,
we watch them crash and burn. But from everyone else's perspective, the tragic hero is just going through the
wringer, and how that affects them varies from
story to story. For instance: Hamlet, from the perspective
of anyone who isn't Hamlet- -is a full-on psychological horror. Troubled young man is haunted by a ghost, driven mad and kills quite
a lot of people? Yikes! Othello is in the same boat. From Desdemona's perspective, her loving
husband slowly gets- -more and more withdrawn, starts spending
more time with his friend, who she's pretty sure doesn't like her, and then strangles her out of nowhere! Tragedy is a matter of perspective. The tragic hero and the audience both see
the story in terms of- -the hero's tragic inevitable downfall; But all anyone else sees is the
collateral damage, which usually takes the form of a
horror story. And we can actually flip this on its head, plenty of stories that aren't tragedies by
any stretch of the imagination- -become tragedies if we shift the focus
to a different character, frequently the villain. Shakespeare aside, my favourite example
of this specific phenomenon is- -Kung Fu Panda 2!
Because nobody ever sees it coming. Ah, got ya with all this
Shakespeare and opera talk! You nearly forgot I'm not classy at all! If we pretend the main character of that
movie is not- -our beloved bouncing panda protagonist- -but instead the stylish and dastardly
villain Lord Shen, we get a classic Greek tragedy format. Hero hears prophesy of downfall, takes drastic steps to prevent
said downfall- -and is eventually destroyed as a
direct result of those very actions, up to and including being literally killed
by his own weapon. This was very deliberate, there are plenty
of classical tragedies- -hidden in the background of
other stories. We just don't notice because
we're used to- -having sympathetic bad guys or
tragic backstories. Sounds obvious out loud, but behind
most tragic backstories is a tragedy. Sometimes the hidden tragedies become
more obvious- -when we get prequels or spin-offs of more
classic adventure stories that explore- -the tragic backgrounds of
future villains, or future dead families of future heroes. The original star wars trilogy is a
full-on hero's journey adventure series, but when they did the prequels and
"Clone Wars", it highlighted- -that Anakin's character arc is a
textbook tragedy. Things start out pretty good for him, as a prodigiously powerful and
well-respected Jedi warrior- -with friends and a wife who love him; but his fatal flaw is quite literally
caring too much. And while the prequels pulled off this
character quality- -with all the grace and subtlety of a
rhinoceros on roller-skates, the Clone Wars actually did make us
believe that- -loving his friends too much was a
real genuine fatal flaw- -that was going to cause Anakin's fall
to the dark side, and turn him into the stoic living
respirator we all know and love. Which brings me to another
interesting point, fatal flaws are entirely a
matter of circumstance. Any character trait can become a flaw
in the wrong situation. What makes the tragedy inevitable is that
the character's unchanging trait- -bumps up against a situation that turns
it into a flaw, and from there the reaction is inevitable. It's been pointed out before that if
Hamlet and Othello swapped tragedies, neither tragedy would have happened. Othello is emotional and impulsive, so all
Iago has to do is rile him up and- -point him in the right direction to get
a murder going; While Hamlet is hesitant and calculating
to the point of anxiety, and refuses to do anything without
monologing about it for forty lines first. If Hamlet were dealing with Iago's
machinations, he'd overthink everything- -for a full 48 hours and make dead sure- -the person he was supposed to kill
actually deserved it. Meanwhile if a ghost popped up and told
Othello to kill someone- -for murdering his dad- -the dude would probably be dead before
the ghost was even gone. If Hamlet were impulsive, only Claudius
would have died. And if Othello were a
calculating overthinker, Iago would be super in prison
before the week was out. The recipe for a tragedy is usually less
about the character trait- -and more about the circumstances that
would turn that trait into a fatal flaw. A fatal flaw is just an
innocent character trait- -in the wrong place at the wrong time. So really, crafting a tragedy is more
about making a situation- -that’s totally incongruous with your
characters’ strengths, or redirects them in harmful and
self-destructive directions. And because it's such an emotionally
loaded exploration- -of a character's depths and flaws, it's totally understandable that this
genre has lasted so long. Character driven narratives
are compelling. And tragedies are like trainwrecks, you kinda can't look away. So... Yeah. And thanks again to Campfire Blaze
for sponsoring this video! Campfire Blaze is a
browser based tool suite, designed to organize your
writing all in one place. That top-down, third person,
omniscient perspective- -is very useful when you're writing
something as laden with dramatic irony- -as your average tragedy. And it's always good to know where exactly
you left your character notes- -before the big peripeteia hits. Blaze features a word processor,
story timeline, character sheets and- character arcs to help keep your
cast organized, and as a fun new feature, if you type a character's name, it'll
automatically tag that character for you! Turning their name into a clickable link- -that'll pull up their character details
in the sidebar for easy reference. Pretty sweet! On the worldbuilding side of things, Campfire Blaze has support for: Maps, key locations, an encyclopedia,
magic, items, languages, and more! If you'd like to make your world public,
or collab with other writers- -you can! But you can also keep the world
totally private if that's more your speed. Campfire Blaze's free version is already
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the link in the description below! (Music plays)
Kung Fu Panda 2? I'll do you one better, Red Vs Blue Season 10. It not only has a more standard tragedy upfront following Carolina, but it also has a perspective shift one right at the end for the Director. On many levels, the show had no right being that good considering how it started and that's why I love it.
Best series 👏
Yeah new vids are cool and all but can we actually get rules on this sub?
Red crushed my Opera Summarized dreams.