FACULDADE DE FILOSOFIA, LETRAS E CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS

DA UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO

Departamento de Letras Modernas
Área de Estudos Lingüísticos e Literários em Inglês

JOÃO VICTOR PEREIRA DA SILVA

AVALIAÇÃO FINAL - SHAKESPEARE OBRA & CRÍTICA (FLM 0583)

Profa. Maria Sílvia Betti

SÃO PAULO
2018
 1

AVALIAÇÃO FINAL
SHAKESPEARE OBRA & CRÍTICA (FLM 0583)

Answer the following questions. Use your own words. Each question is worth two
points. This Final Evaluation is worth 06 points.

1. The term Shakespearean tragedy covers a wide variety of plays and characters,
and to establish one all-encompassing definition is impossible. Certainly the
works do not conform to a set of principles such as those proposed by Aristotle
as the ideal for Greek tragedy. (PRAEGER, Victor L. Cahn. Shakespeare the
Playwright: A Companion to the Complete Tragedies, Histories, Comedies, and
Romances. Westport, CT. 1996.) ​What makes “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”
tragedies, and in what ways does the tragic construction in each of the two plays
differ from the one prescribed in Aristotle’s Poetics?

Hamlet ​and ​Macbeth ​are both tragedies in the sense that they portray the downfall of
an important member of a society, caused by a tragic flaw that the protagonist tries to resist
but to which it finally succumbs. Just as prescribed by Aristotle in his ​Poetics,​ the tragedy is
built around royalty: Oedipus is the King of Thebes, Macbeth is a Scottish general who later
becomes king and Hamlet is the prince of Denmark.
These characters are not merely individuals who fall from grace, but rather symbols of
an entire community, a set of principles and an ideology. The tragedies of Macbeth and
Hamlet are not solely the tragedies of these individuals, but otherwise the tragedy of the
people they command and of the ideologies of that people. The same happens in the Greek
classics: Oedipus fails not only himself, but the people of Thebes.
The main differences between the Shakespearean tragedy and the Greek one is the
motivation behind the tragedy. Whereas in ​Hamlet and ​Macbeth the “fall from grace” is
caused by their own moral limitations — Hamlet’s craving for the truth and Macbeth’s desire
for power —, Oedipus’s fate is prompted by the metaphysical element of Fate and Fortune.
This is not to say that Oedipus does not have free will, as he voluntarily chooses to commit
his tragic mistakes: that fact that he is partially driven by Fate and Fortune only emphasizes
the metaphysical aspect of the Greek tragedy. Oedipus falls not only from his position of
 2

power. He also fails the Gods, he fails the general principles that rule the society in which he
lives.
Hamlet and Macbeth, on the other hand, fall from their new found positions of
individual liberty. The ideas that flourished amid the age of Enlightenment, during the 18th
century, led to the creation of a new order of philosophical thinking that would place men in
the spotlight of progress. What underlies the tragic construction in ​Hamlet ​and ​Macbeth is a
general set of anthropocentric parameters that take away from the metaphysical importance
that was crucial to the shaping of the classical tragedy.

2. Bárbara Heliodora, the most prestigious Shakespeare scholar in Brazil, wrote

that “Othello” is a tragedy with a comic structure. What aspects in the play gave
her elements to make such a statement?

Othello has an overall comic structure because it opposes the tragicity of the conflict
between Othello and his wife Desdemona — through the mischievous actions of Iago — with
some elements of comicity. According to scholar M. K. Chatterjee, these elements can be
divided into four general categories: 1) lago’s diabolical wit and humour; 2) Cassio’s drunken
speeches; 3) Roderigo’s foolery; and 4) Clownage scenes.
He argues that in each of those elements lies a counterbalance to the tragic action of
the play:
The simultaneity of joy and sorrow in the tragic action is what the
tragedy achieves for its aesthetic pleasure and beauty. In the process of
representing the failure of man to attain optimum goodness, Shakespeare
makes us vividly conscious of his essential nobility, grandeur, and immense
possibilities.1

He compares the structure and the tone of the tragedy to the Grotesque genre, and
argues in favor of the multiplicity of forms employed by Shakespeare in his work. The main
conclusion to be drawn from the formal analysis of all Shakespeare’s plays is that Drama has
never been a solid monolith of forms, but rather the amalgamation of several elements,

1
​CHATERJEE, M. K. ​Comic elements in Shakespeare’s tragic drama.​ Burdwan: The University of Burdwan.
PhD Thesis. 2003, p. 80.
 3

structures, effects and devices that seek to tell a story and cause an audience to feel or think
or simply be exposed to that storytelling.

3. Contrary to the title of the play, the focus in “The tragedy of Julius Caesar” is
not on Caesar, who dies in the third act, but on the conspirators who planned
Caesar’s assassination. Comment on Shakespeare’s use of their political and
moral motivations in the play.

Julius Caesar figures amongst Shakespeare’s historical plays and it dramatizes the
conquest, disposition and death of the Roman general. After learning about a conspiracy
orchestrated by his friend Brutus, Caesar tries to demonstrate courage by rising against his
conspirators but is nevertheless assassinated by them. The emphasis of the action of the play
falls on the reaction of the public against the conspirators, as prompted by Mark Anthony,
one of Caesar’s allies.
The importance given to the conspirators and the general public is one of the most
prominent aspects of Shakespeare’s historical play. By drawing away from the figure of the
protagonist, the play moves from the intersubjective relations that can be found in the
traditional tragedy and onto the subject-object relations between individuals and “political
objects”. In the case of ​Julius Caesar,​ the political object is the death of the protagonist
himself — and the consequent political turmoil that comes from it. Rather than closing in the
actions of each individual character (Caesar, Mark Anthony, Brutus), the playwright turns to
the actions on the realm of the public sphere, therefore allowing for subject-object relations to
come to light.
This type of “objective action” is one of the most prominent features of the Epic
Theater, as described by Anatol Rosenfeld in his notorious textbook ​O Teatro Épico. In his
work, Rosenfeld traces back all the times in which an Epic element was an integrating part of
theater: from the chorus in Greek theater to the onset of Brechtian theater, his work covers a
wide array of theater moviments and manifestations that were highly influenced by the Epic,
including Shakespeare’s historical plays.
 4

REFERÊNCIAS

CHATERJEE, M. K. ​Comic elements in Shakespeare’s tragic drama. Burdwan: The

University of Burdwan. PhD Thesis. 2003, p. 80.

ROSENFELD, A. ​O teatro épico. 6​ ed. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2008.