Among the various definitions of tragedy, the one most commonly offered is: a play that deals, at the most uncompromising level, with human suffering, or pathos, with death as the usual conclusion. According to Aristotle's Poetics, the purpose of tragedy is to show how human beings are at the mercy of fate and to purify the audience by provoking extreme emotions of pity and terror. Tragic actions on the dramatic stage cause the audience to experience these extreme feelings which ultimately result in a catharsis or release of these emotions, to reduce these passions to a healthy and balanced proportion. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay However, the application of this definition to Renaissance tragedy is limited in that it makes two far-reaching assumptions about the work, its protagonists, and the audience. First, that the deaths of all the protagonists contributing to the drama are equally tragic, which causes an equal level of catharsis in the audience. Does the self-acquired death of a simultaneously cultured and overly ambitious Faust solicit the same amount of catharsis and empathy as the "pointless" deaths of Cordelia, Gloucester, Lear, the Duke of Castile, Horace, and Isabel among a host of others? innocent characters whose corpses litter the sets of King Lear and The Spanish Tragedy? We are left with a terrifying uncertainty: even if the wicked die, the good die along with them. Second, and perhaps most significantly, catharsis would flow to the audience if the conclusion of the play – significant or otherwise – contained fatal plot twists, surprise deaths, and large-scale massacres. Or in other words, even though the work itself may be physically finished, the repercussions of the deaths, the implied message about human destiny, and the deeper, unresolved psychological issues that plagued the minds of the protagonists continue to trouble audiences long after who left the theater. theatres. The deaths of Lear and Cordelia in King Lear confront us as a fresh, raw wound when our every instinct demands healing and reconciliation. This problem, moreover, is as much of a philosophical order as it is of dramatic effect. In what kind of universe, we ask, can a needless death follow suffering and torture? If characters like Lear, Gloucester, and Edmund all go through a process of awakening, why then do they die? Even Iago, despite all his evil machinations, continues to live to bear the fruits of his crimes. In other Shakespearean tragedies, such as Othello and Hamlet, the play ends with the reconciliation of the tragic hero and society. When Othello implores "Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuating, / Nor belittling anything with malice," like Hamlet and Cleopatra he seeks immortality in his reputation and history. It is a last attempt to reconcile with society and its misdeeds, moments before stabbing himself. In Romeo and Juliet, there is a feeling of hope in the final scene because the Houses of Montague and Capulet are finally at peace with each other, and will erect monuments in memory of the two lovers. From tragedy comes peace and understanding. But in The Spanish Tragedy the only monument we see is that of a pile of corpses slumped behind a curtain. Ultimately it is difficult for the audience to feel whether anything has been gained beyond a sense of remorse and misery. In a Christian context, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Christ. So, no matter how terrible Faustus's pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. But every time the play offers moments in which Faustus can choose to repent, he chooses toremain faithful to Lucifer rather than seek heaven. "Christ called the thief to the cross," he consoles himself, referring to the story of the Thief who was crucified together with Jesus Christ, repented of his sins and was promised a place in heaven. The fact that he compares himself to this figure shows that Faustus assumes that he can wait until the last moment and still escape hell. That is, he wants to give up Mephistopheles, but not yet. One can easily predict that his willingness to delay will prove fatal. Only at the end of his life does Fausto wish to repent and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it's too late for him to regret it. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but unable to be redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entirety of the play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where some sins can no longer be forgiven. The effect of inhabiting such an unforgiving universe before his death is however enhanced in later versions of the text. The ending of the Doctor Faustus B text is very different from that of the A text. The latter simply ends with Faustus being dragged away by the devils and a summary epilogue. Nothing is revealed to the public of what will ultimately happen to his body. Text B however is slightly more reassuring. Despite his self-aggrandizement, vacillations, "hair-splitting, and misquoting of the Scriptures of the second year", Faustus gets a sympathetic ear to hear his agonizing confession of his pact with Lucifer, and subsequently "a due burial" by the scholars . His scattered limbs are collected by scholars, who promise him a burial according to Christian rights, "although Fausto's end is such". Unlike Don Andreas in the Spanish Tragedy, proper burial rites will allow Faustus to take a ride in Charon's boat across the Styx to Hades. The death of King Lear, in comparison, breaks all dramatic conventions. It is perhaps one of the few tragedies in which the tragic hero dies irreconcilable and indifferent to society. The last two acts of King Lear are constructed with a series of advancements and repudiations of visions of hope. By choosing to set King Lear in a pre-Christian era, clearly before Christ's redemption, Shakespeare does not offer the comfort of knowing that all evil, no matter how bad, can be overcome. Nature seems to mock Edgar's faith in justice, when he sees his father brutally blinded immediately after stating that "the worst is not / as long as we can say 'this is the worst'". After a violent family quarrel, Horace witnesses the tragedy that followed. In the final scene, he volunteers to go out and tell the world about the misfortunes that have befallen this once noble family. He will reveal all “carnal, bloody, and unnatural deeds,” as well as “accidental judgments” and “random massacres” so that men may learn from their mistakes. Hamlet's audience is therefore rewarded with some release after this heartbreaking tragedy. The world will be informed that Hamlet was a just man. But what will the world think of Lear? Although it is a symbolic act, no one will tell his story and, in a sense, he will purge himself of further adversity. So, a strong sense of guilt and remorse, what really should have been the burden of the remaining characters, is instead transferred to the audience to bear. But this doesn't seem to happen in King Lear, The Spanish Tragedy or The Doctor. Fausto. No one steps forward to offer any words of closure or perhaps a glimmer of optimism. The tenth violence. The final scene implies that the action ofHieronimo serves as the fulfillment of justice, but the blood, waste and carnage of the penultimate scene work against this conceit, seeming to deny the possibility of justice in a world where the machinations of class and power determine the course of men's lives. In King Lear, Edgar simply offers, “Speak what we feel, not what we should say.” Although sensible, his comment is inappropriate because if this maxim had been observed by everyone and not just Cordelia and Kent, perhaps the tragedy could have been avoided. It is perhaps for these reasons that Tolstoy calls the plot of King Lear "stupid, long-winded, unnatural, incomprehensible, bombastic, vulgar, boring and full of incredible events, 'wild delusions', 'mean jokes', anachronisms, irrelevances, obscenities, worn-out stage conventions and other defects both moral and aesthetic" This could well have been a view shared by Nahum Tate which brought him closer to Shakespeare's sources, in terms of the epilogue. Texts such as the Chronicles of Holinshed, which Shakespeare had at his side when he wrote his historical plays, end with the reconciliation of a father who subjects his daughters to a "love"-test'. Shakespeare's choice, therefore, to end the play with such macabre bloodshed can be seen as a clear attempt to highlight the weakness of humanity and the evil of which it is capable. In King Lear, Shakespeare does not simply adapt his sources, but consciously makes a violent and shocking alteration to them. It converts the popular tales of medieval literature into a more complex account, where everything is clouded and questionable, in a similar way to the epilogue itself. (Hieronimo is at least partly aware of, and poised to exploit, the audience's inability to understand such large-scale tragedies when he chooses to perform his work in a mishmash of foreign languages, the effect of which Balthazar rightly notes, ".. .this will be a mere confusion/ And we shall hardly be all understood." ) The deaths in Hamlet are curiously unrelated to the Ghost's demands. And the latter, unlike tradition, does not return to the stage at the end to celebrate the deaths and not the dubious revenge. Hamlet's decision not to kill Claudius is in fact a considered mistake, a missed opportunity that not only would have concluded the play in less than half the time, avoiding the deaths of so many people, but would also have earned him just revenge. As Hieronimo proceeds deliberately to his last appointment as an agent of death ("And princes, now here is Hieronimo, /Author and actor of this tragedy."). Hamlet almost stumbles upon his last best chance to kill Claudius as a result of a duel with Laertes and various poison plots that he previously knew nothing about, so that his final act of killing is almost instinctive and driven rather in self-defense . compared to the planned strategy. Unlike Hamlet, in The Spanish Tragedy the Don Andreas chorus is quick to take center stage and enjoy the carnage. With only the promise of an afterlife presided over by Pluto and Proserpina, the epilogue has blatantly pagan overtones and no sign of completeness. Don Andreas not only managed to destroy the lives of his enemies while they were alive, but also after they were dead. In a frenzy of bloodlust, he demands and receives the authority to deliver eternal judgment to his rivals. Here there is no end to the incessant pain: the revenge, and therefore the game, continues endlessly. Lorenzo was eternally confined to the wheel of Ixion; Castile will have its liver perpetually torn apart by vultures, and Balthazar will hang around the neck of Chimera. Hieronimo recognizes the tragic's "false endings" when he observes: To die today, for having shaped our scene, The death of