Review of TRAGEDY AND OTHERNESS

 Review of Nicholas Ray's Tragedy and Otherness: https://www.academia.edu/1267607/

Tragedia y dinámica de fuerzas

 Tragedia y dinámica de fuerzas: https://www.academia.edu/1096431/

Tragedy and the Oedipal Subject (Shakespeare and Freud)

 

_____. "Tragedy and the Oedipal Subject: Sophocles and Freud." Vanity Fea 14 July 2025.*

         https://blogdenotasvanityfea.blogspot.com/2025/07/tragedy-and-oedipal-subject-sophocles.html

         2025

https://x.com/JoseAngelGLanda/status/1944648722521968646

         2025

Sophocles and Freud

 Tragedy and the Oedipal Subject: Sophocles and Freud https://www.academia.edu/79621132/

Comedia y Tragedia

 

Sophocles and Freud

Tragedy and the Oedipal Subject: Sophocles and Freud https://www.academia.edu/78756388/

Catharsis tragique chez Aristote

 

Littérature et thérapeutique des passions : la catharsis en question

’Catharsis’ tragique chez Aristote : enjeux et problèmes — Pierre Destrée (FNRS, Louvain), le 4 juin 2010 à 9H45

Revenge Tragedy

 Retropost, 2014:

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature:

revenge tragedy, a dramatic genre that flourished in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean period, sometimes known as 'the tragedy of blood'. Kyd's *The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1587), a much-quoted prototype, helped to establish a demand for this popular form; later examples are Marlowe's *The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare's *Titus Andronicus, *The Revenger's Tragedy, and, most notably, *Hamlet; there are also strong revenge elements in *Webster. Common ingredients include the hero's quest for vengeance, often at the prompting of the ghost of a murdered kinsman or loved one; scenes of real or feigned insanity; a play-within-a-play; scenes in graveyards, severed limbs, scenes of carnage and mutilation, etc. Many of these items were inherited from Senecan drama, with the difference that in revenge tragedy violence was not reported but took place on stage: as Vendice in The Revenger's Tragedy rather baldly puts it, while in the process of slowly murdering the duke, 'when the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good.' The revenge code also produced counter-attacks, as in *The Atheist's Tragedy, in Chapman's *The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois, and again in Hamlet, in which the heroes refuse or hesitate to follow the convention.

The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois, a tragedy by G. *Chapman, written 1610/11, printed 1613, a sequel to *Bussy D'Ambois.
     Clermont D'Ambois, brother of Bussy, described by his close friend the duc de Guise as the ideal 'Senecal [i.e. stoical] man', gentle, noble, generous, and 'fix'd in himself', is urged by his brother's ghost to avenge his murder, but will only do so by the honourable method of a duel. He sends a challenge to Muntsurry, who reads it; urged again by the ghost, he introduces himself to Montsurry's house, forces him to fight, and kills him. He then learns of the assassination of the Guise, and, refusing to live amid 'all the horrors of the vicious time' as 'the slave of power', he kills himself. The hero's reluctance to exact revenge recalls certain aspects of *Hamlet (See also REVENGE TRAGEDY.)

The Revenger's Tragedy, a tragedy published anonymously in 1607, and from 1656 ascribed to *Tourneur; its authorship has been disputed since 1891, with some scholars defending the traditional attribution and others championing the rival claims of *Middleton and others.
     The central character is Vendice (or Vindice), intent on revenging the death of his mistress, poisoned by the lecherous old duke. The court is a centre of vice and intrigue; the duchess's youngest son is convicted of rape, she herself seduces Spurio, the duke's bastard, and her two older sons, the duke's stepsons, plot against each other and against Lussurioso, the duke's heir. Vendice, disguised as Plato, appears to attempt to procure his own sister Castiza for Lussurioso; she resists, but their mother Gratiana temporarily succumbs to his bribes and agrees to play the bawd. Vendice murders the duke by tricking him into kissing the poisoned skull of his mistress, and most of the remaining characters kill one another or are killed in a final masque of revengers and murderers; Vendice, who survives the bloodbath, owns up to the murder of the duke, and is promptly condemned to death with his brother and accomplice Hippolite by the duke's successor, old Antonio. He is led off to execution, content to 'die after a nest of dukes'. The play is marked by a tragic intensity of feeling, a powerfully satiric wit, and passages of great poetic richness, all combined, for example, in Vendice's address to 'the bony lady', his dead mistress: 'Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours / For thee?' (III. v. 71 ff.) (See also REVENGE TRAGEDY.)

The Duke of Milan, a tragedy by *Massinger, printed 1623, one of his earliest independent plays and a popular one. It is based on the story of Herod and Mariamne as told by Josephus.
     Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, has, in the war between the Emperor Charles and the King of France, allied himself with the latter. On their defeat, he goes to surrender himself to Charles, but, fearing for his life, leaves a written instruction with his wicked favourite Francisco to put his beloved wife Marcella to death if he himself is killed. Francisco, seeking to corrupt Marcella in revenge for the dishonoring of his own sister Eugenia by Sforza, reveals the existence of the warrant to her, but fails to move her chastity and only incenses her against the duke, so that on his return after a reconciliation with Charles she receives him coldly. This, coupled with accusations from various quarters of his wife's intmacy with Francisco, makes the duke suspicious of her. Francisco now tells Sforza that Marcella made amorous advances to him, which so inflames the duke with anger that he stabs her to death; dying, she reveals the truth, leaving her husband distracted with remorse. Francisco flees, then returns to court diguised as a Jewish doctor and undertakes to restore Marcella to life. He is discovered and tortured, but not before he succeeds in poisoning the duke.

The Tragic Law

—oOo—

Teatro viviente azteca

 

Samuel Beckett, pensador de lo trágico

 

Viramontes Cabrera, Sonia. "Samuel Beckett como un pensador de lo trágico." Chap. 36 of Nuevas epistemologías de viejos saberes. Ed. Antonio Javier Chica Núñez, Ana Cristina Tomás López and Daniel Navas Carrillo. (Nueva Academia, 17). Cizur Menor (Navarra): Thomson Reuters – Aranzadi, 2002. Online preview at Google Books:

         https://books.google.es/books?id=K32nEAAAQBAJ

         2024

Tragedy and Otherness

 

Tragedia y dinámica de fuerzas

 

Tragedia (A Bibliography)

 Tragedia (A Bibliography) https://bibliojagl.blogspot.com/2023/10/tragedia.html

Nietzsche (II): Filosofía de la libertad: las tragedias griegas

Ayax - Cara y Cruz

On Tragedy and Otherness

LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM eJOURNAL Vol. 2, No. 2: Jan 30, 2012 Browse ALL abstracts for this journal Links: Subscribe ~ Unsubscribe | Distribution | Advisory Board | Submit ~ Revise Your Papers Table of Contents Review of Nicholas Ray's Tragedy and Otherness Jose Angel Garcia Landa, Universidad de Zaragoza ^top LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM eJOURNAL "Review of Nicholas Ray's Tragedy and Otherness"  Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 44, pp. 167-173, 2011 JOSE ANGEL GARCIA LANDA, Universidad de Zaragoza Email: garciala@unizar.es A review of Nicholas Ray's book Tragedy and Otherness: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Psychoanalysis (Peter Lang, 2009). The book offers a post structuralist/psychoanalytic reading of Oedipus the King, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet, as well as a reworking of Freud's insights on tragedy, from a perspective informed by the work of Jean Laplanche and an emphasis on the experience of otherness.

Freud y la interiorización

Coros trágicos a Adrasto

Un pasaje sobre un origen no dionisíaco de la tragedia griega, que figura en Heródoto (Historias, V, 67-68):

Clístenes hizo trasladar a Sición los restos de Melanipo (pues este punto requiere también una explicación), pues, en su opinión, era el peor enemigo de Adrasto, dado que había matado a su hermano Mecisteo y a su yerno Tideo. Y, tras haberle dedicado el citado recintol, privó a Adrasto de sacrificios y de fiestas, y se los adjudicó a Melanipo. Por cierto que los sicionios solían venerar a Adrasto con gran boato, ya que esa región había pertenecido a Pólibo, y Adrasto era nieto de Pólibo por parte de madre; además, al morir sin descendencia masculina, Pólibo entregó el poder a Adrasto (320). Pues bien, los habitantes de Sición veneraban a Adrasto con diversas ceremonias, entre las que, principalmente, destacaba la conmemoración de sus desventuras (321) mediante coros trágicos (con ellos no veneraban a Dioniso, sino a Adrasto). Clístenes, por su parte, asignó (322) los coros a Dioniso y el resto del ritual a Melanipo.

Éstas fueron las medidas que había tomado con respecto a Adrasto. Por lo que se refiere a las tribus dorias, para evitar que los sicionios tuviesen exactamente las mismas que los argivos, les cambió los nombres (323) por otros nuevos. Y, con tal motivo, se mofó descaradamente de los sicionios, pues permutó las denominaciones de las tribus por las palabras "cerdo", "asno" (y "lechón"), a las que simplemente añadió las desinencias (324); sólo exceptuó a su propia tribu, ya que el nombre que le impuso aludía al cargo que ocupaba. A partir de entonces los miembros de su tribu se llamaron Arquelaos (325), mientras que los de las demás recibieron, respectivamente, los nombres de Hiatas, Oneatas y Quereatas (326). Los sicionios utilizaron esos nombres para designar a sus tribus no sólo durante el mandato de Clístenes, sino también a su muerte, por espacio de sesenta años más (327).

 

 

Notas de Carlos Schrader: 

(320). Pólibo (que en otras versiones de la leyenda aparece como padre adoptivo de Edipo) había sido rey de Sición, legando, al morir, su reino a Adrasto, ya que su única hija se había casado con Tálao, el padre de Adrasto. Cf. A. Ruiz de Elvira, Mitología clásica... pág. 142.

(321) Pues el héroe había conocido el exilio en su juventud y, sobre todo, había sufrido, en las dos expediciones contra Tebas, la pérdida de varios parientes y amigos, muriendo finalmente de tristeza (cf. Pausanias, 1 43, 1). La reforma religiosa de Clístenes de Sición tenía una clara significación política, ya que, de un lado, pretendía romper los vínculos religiosos que, a nivel aristocrático, unían a Sición con Argos mediante el culto a Adrasto, suplantándolos por vínculos religiosos ligados a Grecia central (el culto a Melanipo, héroe tebano). Y, por otra parte, en política interior, el tirano se granjeaba la simpatía de las clases populares potenciando el culto a Dioniso. Cf. A. Gitti, "Clistene di Sicione e le suie riforme. Studi sulla storia arcaica di Sicione", Mem. Accad. Naz. 2 (1929), 601 y sigs. 

(322) Este pasaje, de los más importantes que, para la historia del teatro griego, nos han transmitido los autores antiguos (hasta el punto de que se ha convertido en una crux philologica para la crítica moderna, dado que no hay uniformidad en la interpretación de la expresión "coros trágicos", así como   en el significado que hay que dar al verbo "asignar"; para toda esta cuestión, cf. F. r. Adrados, Fiesta, comedia y tragedia. Sobre los orígenes griegos del teatro, Barcelona, 1972, especialmente págs. 19-77), indica la existencia en Sición, a comienzos del siglo VI a.C., de una forma dramática en el culto a un héroe. Clístenes, que no podía suprimir estas ceremonias y diversiones sin desagradar al pueblo, las asignó al culto a Dioniso, celebrándose mediante coros trágicos, con cantos, danzas y diálogos para exponer un tema mítico. 

(323) Los nombres de las tres tribus dorias eran Hileos, Panfilos y Dimanatas (cf. el final del capítulo), pues sus epónimos habían sido, respectivamente, Hilo, Panfilo y Dimante, hijos del dorio Egimio, un aliado de los Heráclidas en su conquista del Peloponeso. Esta reforma de Clístenes (los Ortagóricdas pertenecían a  la población no doria de Sición) tenía una finalidad antiargiva y, sobre todo, antiaristocrática. Y quizá en este punto sea donde la semejanza con las medidas de su nieto ateniense sean mayores, ya que, a partir de Aristóteles, Política VI 4, 23, 1319b, cabe pensar que el tirano de Sición sustituyó las tres tribus gentilicias de Sición por cuatro tribus territoriales, aumentando además el número de las fratrías, con lo que ls nuevas tribus habrían tenido una doble división, en circunscripcioines locales y en fratrías. Cf. C. Mossé, la tyrannie dans la Grèce antique, París, 1969, págs. 38-47.

(324) Es decir, las desinencias propias de los gentilicios.

(325) "Los caudillos del pueblo" (de arché, "mando", y laós, "pueblo"). Posiblemente la noticia que transmite Heródoto se basa en esa etimología, pero no se atiene a la realidad, ya que Arquelao debió de ser algún antiguo héroe sicionio, no dorio, que fue tomado como epónimo para la cuarta tribu que creó Clístenes (las poblaciones dorias se caracterizaban por estar divididas en tres tribus; frente a los jonios, que por lo regular lo estaban en cuatro).

(326) Es decir, "los cerdos", "los asnos" y "los lechones". Es inverosímil que Clístenes hubiera tomado semejante medida. Estos nombres podrían ser de origen totémico, reflejo de antiguos cultos predóricos. Cf. Ed. Will, Doriesn et Ioniens, París, 1956, págs., 396 y sigs.

(327) De acuerdo con la cronología atribuida a la tiranía de Clístenes (cf. D. M. Leahy, "The dating of the Orthagorid dynasty", Historia 17 (1968), 1-23), hasta el año 510 a.C., aproximadamente, con lo cual coincidiría con la fecha que el Papiro Rylands 18 (F. Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist. 105, fr. 1) atribuye a la caída del tirano Esquines de Sición, el último de los Ortagóridas. Con todo, la historia de Sición en esos sesenta años a que alude Heródoto es escasísimamente conocida.

 

 

 

El drama del período ático (500-323 a.C)

De la Historia de la Civilización Antigua de Th. Zielinski, III.3:

II. 

Las artes musicales

En esa época, la triple corea llegó al punto culminante de su desarrollo en el drama ático. Todo lo que pudiéramos decir del papel independiente de la música o de la orquesta, palidece al lado del drama; se puede notar solamente, por lo que se refiere a la música, que ésta sufrió una evolución análoga a la que se produce en nuestros días, es decir, que los medios de expresión se hacen más complicados, y que ella se libra de las formas antiguas de composición (reformas de Finiz y de Timoteo). Los partidarios de la música severa veían en esto, como en nuestros días, un síntoma de decadencia.

Las otras formas de poesía, exceptuando el drama, se debilitan igualmente. La epopeya heroica murió desde que desaparecieron los aedos; los rapsodas se redujeron, en tiempos de los concurso rapsódicos, a declamar a Homero. La epopeya didáctica dio sus útimas obras con loos dos primeros Eleatas, Xenófanes y Parménides, añadiendo a Empédoocless; pero esto era aún al principio del siglo V; más tarde, la epopeya dejó lugar a la prosa científica. La elegía, la lírica coral y mélica y el yambo tienen aún sus representantes, pero son poetas de segundo orden; los poetas dotados de un talento creador se ejercitan en el dominio nuevamente descubierto del drama, y esto no solamente en Ática: el brillo de las Dionisias atenienses atrajo igualmente a poetas del otro lado de las fronteras. Ion, de Quío, y Aqueo, de Eretria, se añaden al número de los dramaturgos de esa época. Pero es Atenas la que da el tono; la poesía del período ático es casi exclusivamente poesía ática. ¿Significa esto que los otros estados no produjeron ningún poeta eminente? ¿O bien que sus obras, eclipsadas por las de los poetas atenienses, no sobrevivieron hasta la época siguiente? No podemos responder a esas preguntas.

Los concursos dramáticos tenían lugar dos veces por año; se aceptaban cada vez doce tragedias (comprendiendo los dramas satíricos) y tres o cinco comedias. Y como no estaba permitido repetir el mismo drama sino en casos completamente excepcionales, se puede imaginar cuán productiva fué la literatura dramática en el curso de los dos siglos del periodo ático; ésta sobrepasó, ciertamente, por sus proporciones, a toda la poesía precedente. Muy poco se conservó de ella en la época siguiente, en el tiempo de los coleccionistasy de los editores de Alejandría; por lo que hace a nosotros, sólo conservamos—sin contar los fragmentos—treinta y tres tragedias y once comedias.

Entre los poetas trágicos, Frínico escribía aún en dialecto jonio—pero ése fué el último tributo de la musa àtica a su hermana mayor—; con el sucesor de Frínico, la lengua ática triunfó en la escena.  Ese sucesor fue Esquilo, de Eleusis, el legislador de la tragedia ática (525-456). Él resolvió una cuestión: ¿a cuál de las dos pertenecía la superioridad, a la tragedia seria o al drama satírico y alegre? Y él, decimos, decidió que cada poeta debía dar tres tragedias y, a guisa de conclusión, un drama satírico. Esas tragedias eran, para él, o al menos en el principio de su carrera, cantatas líricoépicas, sin fábulas dramáticas y sin estudio de carácter de los personajes; pero, dando cada vez tres cantatas así, llegó a representar tres momentos sucesivos de una misma fábula (principio trilógico). Tal es la trilogía de las Danaides; su primer tragedia a Las suplicantes (que se conserva aún) represeenta el recibimiento hecho por los argivos a las danaides, fugitivas de sus primos; en la segunda tragedia, Los constructores de palacios (que no ha sido conservada)—después del sitio de Argos por sus mismos primos, y la revolución que da el poder a Danao—, el matrimonio forzado de las Danaides, después del cual Danao les ordena degollar, durante la noche de bodas, a sus maridos, y por firn, viene la tercera (que no se ha conservado), las Danaides, que es el juicio pronunciado, por Danao contra Hipermnestra, la única de sus hijas que no acató esa orden. Como se ve por este ejemplo, las principales acciones se supone que pasan en el intervalo de una a otra tragedia, limitándose éstas a representar episodios separados: el recibimiento, el matrimonio y el juicio. En el curso de la evolución ulterior de la trilogía, la acción pasa poco a poco en las tragedias mismas, en lugar de ser colocada en los intervalos. Así, en la última trilogía de Esquilo, La Orestia (íntegramente conservada), tenemos un ejemplo de esta segunda manera: la primera tragedia, Agamenón, representa la vuelta del héroe de Troya y su asesinato por Clitemnestra, su mujer; la segunda, las Coéforas (es decir, los "portadores de libaciones a la tumba del rey muerto"), la venganza por su hijo adolescente, Orestes, y la persecución del matricida por las Erimias irritadas; en la tercera, las Euménides, aparecen los pasos de Orestes en Delfos y en Atenas, y su rehabilitación por el tribunal del Areópago,. Toda la acción se concentra en las tragedias mismas; ninguno de los sucesos importantes ocurre en los intervalos. Paralelamente al desarrollo de la acción aparece el de los caracteres: en La Orestia, el poeta llega, en ese punto de vista, a una perfección admirable, pero en un solo sentido todos sus caracteres son severos en sus virtudes—como Orestes—y en sus crímenes—como Clitemnestra—. En general, Esquilo es, ante todo, un poeta majestuoso; esta majestad se manifiesta tanto en la composición de sus tragedias con sus coros admirables, profundos de pensamiento y maravillosos de forma, como en la estructura del diálogo con la elocuencia de sus largos discursos, y en la lengua misma, pujante, rica en imágenes y atrevida en la elección de las palabras y en su presentación. no disponiendo sino de dos actores—fué él mismo quien introdujo el segundo—, Esquilo no podía llevar a la escena más de dos personajes a la vez. En cambio, los corifeos (es decir, los que dirigen el coro) tenían un papel importante: los personajes en escena entraban generalmente en conversación con ellos. 

Por lo que concierne a los argumenots de los dramas de Esquilo, en un principio, mientras su tragedia es cantata, admite, como Frínico, temas históricos. Dichosamente, por ejemplo, sus Persas se han conservado.; el argumento de éstos es la victoria de Salamina en el año 480, y son maravilloso testimonio de la humanidad helénica—es preciso recordar que esta tragedia, que tenía por objeto despertar la compasión hacia el enemigo vencido, fué representada en el año 472, a la vista de los santuarios de la Acrópolis destruidos por los persas, y hay que recordar también que obtuvo el primer premio—. Pero más tarde, a medida que la tragedia se dramatiza, Esquilo se consagra a temas puramente mitológidos, y sus sucesores imitan su ejemplo. La tragedia ateniense del sigloV y del siglo IV fue una nueva—y cuarta también— encarnación poética de la leyenda heroica griega. 

El primero, en fecha, de los sucesores eminentes de Esquilo, fue Sófocles (496-406), originario de Colono, barrio de Atenas. Transformando el principio trilógico de su predecesor y maestro, hizo un todo con cada una de las tragedias de sus trilogías, dando a cada una intriga y desenlace particulares. Extendió la gama de los caracteres, añadiendo a los caracteres severos que le había legado Esquilo diferentes matices de caracteres tiernos y dulces. Introdujo un tercer actor, lo que le prmitió hacer el diálogo más rico y más complejo; a decir verdad, no usó de esta posibilidad sino con tino, reduciendo el diálogo de tres personajes a dialogos sucesivos entre dos de ellos: después de la conversación entre A y B, venía la conversación entre A y C y entre B y C. Esta sobriedad (opuesta a la vivacidad de la comedia) estaba considereada como necesaria para la solemnidad de la tragedia; y fué respetada por el sucesor de Sófocles: Eurípides. Debemos reconocer que, tanto la tragedia como el drama, llegan a su apogeo con Sófocles; por medios que nos parecen muy sencillos,y dado el reducido número de los personajes y las proporciones relativamente restringidas de la tragedia, Sófocles realiza una acción muy emocionante: la lucha heroica de Edipo (Edipo Rey) contra el destino, el sacrificio de Antígona, la sed de venganza demoníaca de Electra y de Orestes, temas todos inolvidables, que han enriquecido para la eternidad el tesoro de la poesía universal. El poeta en sí era una verdadera encarnación de lo mejor que había en el helenismo, personalmente fuerte, vigoroso, notable por la diversidad de sus dotes y de trato seductor; llegó hasta los noventa años, en posesión de todas sus facultades intelectuales; escribió cerca de 120 dramas y tuvo la suerte de morir en vísperas de la ruina de su patria.

Sobrevivió, aunque sólo fuera unos meses, a su colega menor Eurípides. Este nació el año mismo de la batalla de Salamina, en la que Esquilo tomó parte, y después de la cual Sófocles tuvo el honor, como el más hermoso de los efebos, de celebrar el peán de gracias. Desde su juventud, y con entusiasmo, [Eurípides] participó en el movimiento sofístico, que no llegó a quebrantar la concepción moral y religiosa de Sófocles; sus tragedias son un vivo eco de ese momento. A la escala de los caracteres de una pieza que le legaron sus predecesores, él [Eurípides] añadió los caracteres rotos, vacilantes, aplastado por el peso de los problemas insolubles y de su propia irreligiosidad. Gustaba de presentar la moral en lucha con la pasión, particularmente con el amor culpable; sus contemporáneos se impresionaron con las figuras criminales, no viciosas, sin embargo, como su Fedra, enammorada de su entenado (Hipólito) y como su Macareo, amante de su misma hermana (Canacea); esta tragedia no ha sido conservada. Los personajes insistían de una manera tan convincente sobre su inocencia (sofística de la pasión), que no se podía levantar la mano sobre ellos; pero la moral exigía que se los condenase. Eurípides se aplicó, sobre todo, a pintar el sello de la pasión sobre el alma femenina, ya fuese el amor, como en Fedra, o ya los celos, como en Medea. Por esto sus contemrporáneos veían en él un enemigo de las mujeres; pero esto era injusto, ya que él nos dió conmovedoras imágenes de esposas (Alcestes, Evadne), de hermanas (Macaria, en los Heráclidas), y de hijas abnegadas (Ifigenia, en Eulida). Sus contemporáneos, en general, no le juzgaron con benevolencia; más tarde, en cambio, fue juzgado como el más trágico de los poetas trágicos, y a esta popularidad se debe el número relativamente considerable de las tragedias suyas que han sido conservadas: 18, comprendiendo entre ellas el drama satírico del Cíclope; en tanto que no se conservan sino siete tragedias de Esquilo, y siete, igualmente, de Sófocles. Esas obras producen sobre nosotros una impresión desigual, y más aún si no se tienen en cuenta ciertas convenciones, tales como el prólogo dirigido al público, y el famoso deus ex machina (es decir, la súbita aparición en los aires de una divinidad que da a la acción un desenlace imprevisto y, a menudo, violento). pero si descartamos todo lo que nos desagrada, hallamos que Euurípides ha dejado muchos tipos positivos que le garantizan la inmortalidad.

Tal fué en el siglo V el desarrollo de la tragedia ática. nada podemos decir del siglo IV. En él hubo muchos poetas, algunos de ellos muy populares, pero no tenemos ninguno de sus dramas, ni tampoco algún testimonio expresivo. Es, quizá, una injusticia hacia ellos; pero nada podemos contra esa injusticia: para nosotros, la época creadora de la tragedia ática termina en el año de la derrota de Atenas.

 Ese año fatal tuvo un efecto diferente para la otra rama importante del drama ateniense: la comedia. Esta viene de dos fuentes esenciales: primera, los cantos acusadores de los hombres disfrazados contra aquellos que los habían ofendido (es la komodia en el sentido primitivo de la palabra, el canto del komos, es decir, de una pandilla de borrachos), y segunda, el intermedio satírico que podía atacar a los dioses, así como a los hombres parodiando de una manera cómica los mitos correspondientes. Este intermedio satírico, en su forma típica, se encuentra en muchos lugares—en Siracusa, su representante fue un poeta de gran valor, contemporáneo de Esquilo, Epicarno, y con el nombre de mimo siguióo existiendo durante todos los periodos de la antigüedad—; pero en Atenas se confundió con los cantos acusadores, y así la conoció el siglo V—es decir, la comedia política—. Tuvo por representantes oficiales a Cratinus, contemporáneo y enemigo de Pericles; a Eufolis y a Aristófanes, que vivían en el tiempo de la guerra del Peloponeso. Sólo las obras de este último se han conservado: 11 comedias, que son quizá el legado más original que nos ha dejado toda la literatura antigua. Nunca, después, se encontró tal libertad en el verbo acusador; admiramos la fuerza del Estado ateniense, que pudo soportar durante dos generaciones, sobre una escena pública, una crítica tan acerba. Aristófanes acribilla con sus burlas a los demagogos poderosos, como Cleón, Hipérbolos y Cleofón; a los representantes de la corriente espiritual que le son antipáticos, como Eurípides, Agatón y los sofistas; y, con cierto dolor, encontramos entre ellos al mismo Sócrates; pero éste acogió sonriendo y con buen humor la caricatura que su adversario espiritual había hecho de su persona en una comedia, y Platón, en su Banquete, nos muestra al uno y al otro en confversación amigable con Agatón. Era que el veneno de la burla estaba como esparcido en la atmósfera dionisíaca; no había rencor "para aquel que se mofaba en las fiestas tradicionales de Dionisos".

Pero el golpe dado a la hegemonía de Atenas rompió al mismo tiempo su vuelo en el dominio de la sátira política; en el siglo IV, la comedia se estancó. Renunciando a la invectiva personal, explotó, criticándolas más o menos, las costumbres de la época, en particular las de la juventud dorada de Atenas, con sus orgías, sus pasiones y sus dolores afectados. La fecundidad de los poetas, dada la facilidad del trabajo, fué aún mayor: Antífanes, Aleix y algunos otros han dejado cada uno varias centenas de comedias. pero desde el punto de vista cualitativo, esa comedia ática media—como la llamamos—atestigua, lo mismo que toda la poesía del siglo IV, el reflujo de las fuerzas creadoras del pueblo Su importancia histórica reside en que preparó el nuevo vuelo de la comedia en el periodo siguente, la nueva comedia ática de Menandro.

(317-26)

Las Dos Leyes

 Retropost, 2012:

—según la lectura que hace J. N. Findlay de la Fenomenología del Espíritu de Hegel. Según Hegel, el primer paso más allá de la ética racionalista hacia una ética espiritual se discierne en la tragedia griega. Su análisis es de interés no sólo para una teoría del espíritu o del conocimiento (en la que se inserta) sino de modo más local en tanto que es un análisis profundo de la estructura ideológica del drama— sus esquemas organizativos, o su estructura profunda, si así queremos decirlo. Es por tanto una interpretación del drama basada en una teoría cultural de la sociedad, y también una teoría narratológica. Anticipa también de modo notable la oposición nietzscheana entre el lado apolíneo y dionisíaco de la tragedia. También es toda una teoría del género, y resulta ser así una narratología cultural de la diferencia genérica. En fin, que es una perspectiva sobre la tragedia griega enormemente sugerente. Así la sintetiza Findlay en su prólogo a la Fenomenología del Espíritu:

Hegel finds the exemplary material for this first, rudimentary form of spirituality in the ethical world of Greek tragedy, with which he had come into vivid contact in his Gymnasium studies at Stuttgart. Rudimentary spiritual life is not the life of an undivided community with which the individual subject identifies himself whole-heartedly: it is essentially bifocal, and centres as much in the family, with its unwritten prescriptions dimly backed by dead ancestors, as in the overt power of the State, with its openly proclaimed, 'daylight' laws. The law of the family is a divine law, a law stemming from the underworld of the unconscious, and interpreted by the intuitive females of the family: the state law is on the contrary human, and is proclaimed and enforced by mature males. Hegel makes plain that these laws must at times clash—the theme of the Antigone and other tragedies: in the case of such clashes, the individual incurs guilt whatever he may do. Obviously Hegel has here seized on a very profound source of disunity in ethical spiritual life: the clash between a self-transcendence which is deep, but also tinged with contingent immediacy, and a self-transcencence which can be extended indefinitely, but in that very extensibility necessarily lacks depth. The truly moral life to which we must advance will be as deep in its care for individual problems and circumstances as it is wide in its concern for anyone and everyone. For the time being, however, the rent life of the primitive ethical community must yield place to a spiritual life where all intimacy is dissolved. (Findlay xxi).

—que será ejemplificada por Hegel, en las fases fenomenológicas atravesadas por el espíritu, por el mundo del imperio romano.

Los apartados en que trata Hegel la cuestión de las dos leyes y de los conflictos éticos, con el ejemplo de Antígona, están en la scción VI, "Spirit", de la Fenomenología del Espíritu, especialmente §438-476. Reproduciré aquí no el texto de Hegel, sino su síntesis en el comentario o explicación de Findlay sobre las secciones más relevantes para el drama.
Primero, establece Hegel cómo la vida espiritual de una comunidad se divide en dos ámbitos regidos por dos leyes: el ámbito humano del Estado, la ley y la vida "diurna" de la comunidad, y el ámbito familiar, ámbito divino y más unido a la intuición y a la tradición. El primero es masculino y el segundo femenino, y el primero descansa en última instancia sobre el segundo.

VI. SPIRIT

(...)

§439. The essence of Spirit has already been recognized as the ethical substance, the customs and laws of a society. Spirit, however, is the ethical actuality which, when it confronts itself in objective social form, has lost all sense of strangeness in what it has before it. The ethical substance of custom and law is the foundation and source of everyone's action and the aim towards which it tends: it is the common work which men's co-operative efforts seek to bring about. The etical substance is as it were the infinite self-dispending benevolence on which every individual draws. It is of the essence of this substance to come to life in distinct individuals and to act through and in them.

§440. Spirit is the absolutely real being of which all previous forms of consciousness have represented falsely isolated abstractions, which the dialectic development has shown them to be. In the previous stage of observational and active Reason, Sirit has rather had Reason than been Reason: it has imposed itself as a category on material not intrinsically categorized. When Spirit sees itself and its world as being Reason it becomes ethical substance actualized.

§441. Spirit in its immediacy is the ethical life of a people, of individuality at once with a social world. But it must advance to the full consciousness of what it immediately is through many complex stages, stages realized in a total social world and not merely in a separate individual consciousness.

§442-3. The living ethical world of spirit is its truth, its abstract self-knowledge being the formal generality of law. But it dirempts itself on the one hand into the hard reality of a world of culture, and on the other hand into the inner reality of a world of faith and insight. The conflict between these two modes of experience is resolved in Spirit-sure-of-itself, i.e. in morality. Out of all these attitudes the actual self-consciousness of absolute Spirit will make its appearance.


THE TRUE SPIRIT. THE ETHICAL ORDER. 

§444. Spirit is a consciousness which intrinsically separates its moments, whether in its substance or in its consciousness. In its consciousness the individual moral act and the accomplished work are separated from the general moral substance or essence: the term which serves as middle term between them is the individual conscious agent.

§445. The ethical substance, i.e. the system of laws and customs, itself reflects the distinction between the individual action or agent, on the one hand, and the moral substance or essence, on the other. It splits up into a human and a divine law. The individual harried by these contradictory laws both knows and does not know the wrongness of his acts, and is tragically destroyed in the conflict. Through such tragic instances, individuals learn to advance beyond blind obedience to law and custom. They achieve the ability to make conscious decisions to obey or disobey.

THE ETHICAL WORLD

§446. Spirit is essentially self-diremptive. But just as bare being dirempts itself into the Thing with its many properties, so the ethical life dirempts itself into a web of ethical relations. Adn just as the many properties of the Thing concentrate themselves into the contrast between individuality and universality, so too do ethical laws resolve themselves into individual and universal laws.

§447. The ethical substance, as individual reality, is the commonality which realizes itself in a plurality of existent consciousnesses in all of which it is consciously reflected, but which also underlies them as substance and contains them in itself. As actual substance it is a people, as actual consciousness the citizens of that people. Such a people is not anything unreal: it exists and prevails.

§448. This Spirit can be called the human law since it is a completely self-conscious actuality. It is present as the known law and the prevailing custom. It shows itself in the assurance of individuals generally, and of the government in particular. It has a daylight sway, and lets individuals go freely about their business.

§449. The ethical substance reveals itself, however, in another law, the Divine Law, which springs from the immediate, simple essence of the ethical, and is opposed to the fully conscious dimension of action, and extends down to the inner essence of individuals. 

§450. The Divine Law has its own self-consciousness, the immediate consciousness of self-in-other, in a natural ethical community, the Family. The Family is that elementary, unconscious ethical being which is opposed to, and yet is also presupposed by, the conscious ethical being of the people and their devotion to common ends.

§451. In the Family natural relations carry universal ethical meaning. The individual in the Family is primarily related to the Family as a whole, and not by ties of love and sentiment to its particular members. The Family, further, is not concerned to promote the well-being of its particular members, nor to offer them protection. It is concerned with individuality raised out of the unrest and change of life into the universality of death, i.e. the Family exists to promote the cult of the dead.

§452. The individuality by dying achieves peace and universality through a merely natural process. As regards its timing it is only accidentally connected with the services he performs to the community, even though dying is in a sense the supreme service to the community that a man can perform, in furnishing the Family with its ancestral pantheon, its household Lares. In order, however, that the individual's taking up into universality may be effective, it must be helped out by a conscious act on the part of the Family members. This act may indifferently be regarded as the saving of the deceased individual from destruction, or as the conscious effecting of that destruction, so that the individual becomes a thing of the past, a universal meaning. The Family resists the corruption of worms and of chemical agencies by substituting their own conscious work in its place, by consigning the dead individual solemnly to the imperishable elementary individual, the earth. It thereby also makes the dead person an imperishable presiding part of the Family.

§454. There are in both laws differences and gradations. In discussing these we shall see them in active operation, enjoying their own self-consciousness and also interacting with one another.

§455. The human law has its living seat in the government in which it also assumes individual form. The government is the actual Spirit which reflects on itself, and is the self of the whole ethical substance. It may accord a limited independence to the families under its sway, but is always ready to subordinate them to the whole. It may likewise accord a limited independence to individuals promoting their own gain and enjoyment, but it has to prevent such individual concerns from becoming overriding. From time to time it must foster wars to prevent individual life from becoming a mere case of natural being, and ceasing to serve the freedom and power of the social whole. The daylight, human law, however, always bases its authority on the deeper authority of the subterranean Divine Law.

§456. The Divine Law governs three different family-relationships, that of husband to wife, of parents  to children, and of siblings to one another. The husband-wife relation is a case of immediate self-recognition in another consciousness which has also a mainly natural character: its reality lies outside of itself, in the children, in which it passes away.

§457. A relationship unmiexed with transience or inequality of status is that of brother and sister. In them identity of blood has come to tranquillity and equilibrium. As sister, a woman has the highest intimations of ethical essence, not yet brought out into actuality or full consciousness: she manifests internal feeling and the divinity that is raised above the actual. As daughter, a woman must see her parents pass away with resigned tenderness, as mother and wife there is something natural and replaceable about her, and her unequal relation to her husband, in which she has duties where he mainly has pleasures, means that she cannot be fully aware of herself in another. In brother and sister there are none of the inequalities due to desire nor any possibility of replacement: the loss of a brother is irreparable to a sister, and her duty to him is the highest.

§458. The brother represents the family-spirit at its most individual and therefore turned outwards towards a wider universality. The brother leaves the immediate, elemental, negative ethical life of the family to achieve a self-conscious, actual ethical life.

§459. The brother passes from the suzerainty of the divine to that of the human law: the sister or wife remains the guardian of the Divine Law. They have each a different natural vocation, a sequel of the vocation considered above in the 'task itself', a vocation which has its outer expression in the distinction of sex.

§460. The human and ethical orders require one another. The human law has its roots in the divine order, whereas the Divine law is only actual in the daylight realm of existence and activity.

§461. The ethical system in its two branches fulfils all the perfect categories that have led up to it. It is rational in that it unites self-consciousness and objectivity. It observes itself in the customs which surround it. It has pleasure in the family life and necessity in the wider social order. It has the law of the heart at its root which is also the law of all hearts. It exhibits virtue and the devotion to the 'task itself'. It provides the criterion by which all detailed projects and acts are tested.

§462. The ethical whole is a tranquil equilibrium of parts in which each finds its stisfaction in this equilibrium with the whole. Justice is the agency which restores this equilibrium whenever it is disturbed by individuals or classes. The communal spirit avenges itself on wrongs done to its members, wrongs which have the mechanical character of the merely natural, by equally natural expedients of revenge.

§463. Universal self-conscious Spirit is chiefly manifest in the man, unconscious individualized Spirit in the woman: both serve as middle terms in what amounts to the same syllogism uniting the divine with the human law.

A continuación ejemplifica Hegel, aludiendo al ejemplo de Antígona, el surgimiento del acto moral (y trágico) como consecuencia del conflicto entre las dos leyes, entre el ámbito del Estado y el ámbito de la familia. Es un conflicto surgido de la acción individual:

§464. In the opposition of the two laws we have not yet considered the role of the individual and his deed. It is the individual's deed which brings the two laws into conflict. A dreadful fate (Schicksal) here enters the scene and makes action come out on one side or the other.

§465. The individual's self-alignment with one law does not, however, involve internal debate and arbitrary choice, only immediate, unhesitant, dutiful self-commitment. There is no quarrel of duty with duty. It is one's sex, Hegel suggests, which decides which law one will obey.

§466. In self-consciousness the two laws are explicit, not merely implicit as in ordinary ethical life. The individual's character commits him to one law. The other seems to him only an unrighteous actuality (será el punto de vista de Antígona sobre la orden de Creonte) or a case of human obstinacy or perversity (es así como ve Creonte la obstinación de Antígona).

§467. The ethical consciousness cannot (like the consciousness that preceded it) draw any distinction between an objective order and its own subjective order: it cannot doubt that the law it obeys has absolute authority. Nor is there any taint of individuality left over that can deflect it from the path of duty. (Así pues, la acción de Antígona no se debe a un impulso individualista o de aserción de su propio yo). It cannot conceive that the duty could be other than what it knows it to be.

§468. None the less the ethical consciousness cannot divert itself of allegiance to both laws, and so cannot escape guilt when it opts for the one as opposed for the other. Only an inert, unconscious stone can avoid incurring guilt. The guilt is, however, not individual, but collective. It is the guilt of a whole class or sex.

§469. The law violated by an individual's act necessarily demands vindication, even though its voice was not at the time heard by the violator. Action brings the unconscious into the daylight, and forces consciousness to bow to its offended majesty.

§470. The ethical consciousness is most truly guilty when it wittingly rejects the behests of one law and holds them to be violent and wrong. Its action denies the demand for real fulfilment which is part of the law, and so involves real guilt.

§471. The individual cannot survive the tragic conflict in him of the two laws, neither of which he can repudiate. He cannot merely have a sentiment (Gesinnung) for the one. His whole being is consumed in pathos, which is part of his character as an ethical being.

§472. In the fateful conflict of two laws in different individuals both individuals undergo destruction. Each is guilty in the face of the law he has violated. It is in the ethical subordination of both sides that absolute right is first carried out.

§473. A young man leaves the unconscious natural medium of ethical life to become ruler of the community and administer the human law. But the natural character of his origins may show itself in a duplicity of existence, e.g. Eteocles and Polynices. The community is bound to honour the one who actually possesses power, and to dishonour the mere claimant to state power who takes up arms against the community. This dishonour involves deprivation of burial rights. (Es la forma que toma el conflicto en la Antígona de Sófocles).

§474. The family-spirit, backed by the Divine Law, and with its roots in the underworld waters of forgetfulness, is affronted by these human arrangements. The dead man finds instruments of vengeance by which the representatives of the human law are in their turn destroyed.

§475. The battle of laws, with its inherent pathos, is carried on by human agents, which gives it an air of contingency. The atomistic family has to be liquidated in the continity of communal life, but the latter continues to have its roots in the former. Womankind, that eternal source of irony, reduces to ridicule the grave deliberations of the state elders, and asserts the claims of youth. The communal spirit then takes its revenge of feminine anarchy by impressing youth into war. In war the ethical substance asserts its negativity, its freedom from all existing arrangements. But since victory depends on fortune and strength, this sort of ethical community breaks down, and is superseded by a soulless, universal ethical community, based on limitless individualism.

§476. The destruction of the ethical world of custom lies in its mere naturalness, its immediacy. This immediacy breaks down because it tries to combine the unconscious peace of nature with the self-conscious, unresting peace of Spirit. An ethical system of this natural sort is inevitably restricted, and gets superseded by another similar system. Spiritual communal life necessarily detaches itself from such tribalism, and erects itself into a formally universal 'open society' (term not used by Hegel) dispersed among a vast horde of separate individuals.

Sobre la lectura hegeliana de Antígona, puede verse también la interpretación de Slavoj Zizek, que enfatiza la dimensión retroactiva de las acciones morales de Antígona.

La idea central de la Fenomenología del Espíritu

 

—oOo—

Role at Variance with Self

 From the Treacherous Entertainment to the Noble Death. Further reflections on the "World as a Stage" theme, or the self-conscious depiction of the theatricality of self and social life in Renaissance drama:

From McAlindon, English Renaissance Tragedy (I.IV: "The Treacherous Entertainment: The Symbolism of Rite and Play"):

Any account of the core elements of Renaissance tragedy must necessarily inquire into the function and significance of its most characteristic and conventionalised scene, the Treacherous Entertainment (as I have called it). This scene may coincide with the major point of change near the centre of the action, but as a rule it forms the catastrophe. It may consist simply of a banquet or a game; more often it is a play or masque performed in conjunction with a marriage. But, whatever its position or form, it is always a ritual affirmation of love and union which turns out to be a monstrous negation of everything it affirms.

Fashioned by Thomas Kyd with great originality out of elements drawn from Seneca's Thyestes and Medea, the Treacherous Entertainment is a dramatic device whose popularity must be ascribed to its symbolic function as well as to its great theatrical potential. Every dramatist who uses it seeks to give it some original twist, but all follow Kyd in shaping it as an elaborate model of the play-world to which it belongs. Thus, however much it may differ in detail from play to play, its guiding principle is always a lightning confusion of opposites which summarises the essential nature of life in its tragic perspective. Hospitality and violence, love and hatred, marriage and mourning, play and earnest, and comedy and tragedy are all likely to be involved here in a sudden and 'huge eclipse'.

Although by far the most important, the Treacherous Entertainment is seldom if ever the only action of its kind in a tragedy. Usually there are two to three well-distributed ritual scenes, standing out clearly from the rest of the action and related to each other by analogy and contrast and sometimes cause and effect; indeed, it is difficult not to see in this pattern a basic constructional formula on which the dramatists are heavily dependent. Some ritual scenes exhibit an achieved order, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and even they are darkened by external threats or flawed by some subtle internal discord. The general impression given by ritual scenes, an impression which transfers to the tragedies built round them, is an impression of rite gone wrong: the pun, facilitated by interchangeable spelling in the seventeenth century, is ubiquitous.

it has been argued with great persuasiveness that the symbolic strategies of Renaissance drama, ritual and pageant serve to express two quite different conceptions of life. Whereas rite, cremony, and pageant, it is said, stand for the traditional view of the world as a stable and immutable order, play signifies the new and disturbing notion of life—embraced in their different ways by Promethean heroes and Machiavellian politicians—as a historical process in which nothing is stable and the individual is free to assume ever new identities.(97) I would suggest, however, that the operative distinction is not between rite and play (drama) but between the proper and the improper use of each. The Treacherous Entertainment in its most typical form exemplifies this point. Ritual and play are both presented in it as accepted signs and instruments of harmonious order, and both are either violently truncated or wilfully perverted for destructive ends. As in Renaissance tragedy generally, they function in this scene as symbolic partners.

(...)

The radical discrepancy between self and role (or style) which the villain cheerfully ignores becomes a source of painful self-consciousness, of division within and alientation without, in characters of tragic stature; and we may include in this category introspective 'tool villains' such as Webster's Bosola, specifically described as 'a good actor . . . playing a villain's part'.(115) Such characters come to adopt roles at variance with their true or better selves not knowingly and eagerly, like the villain, but blindly and in response to powerful compulsions. These compulsions may be objectifies in the figure of the tyrant or usurper, who characteristically redistributes roles at will, or the Machiavellian tempter, who would make a change of role seem no change at all.

Because conceptions of the self and its relation to society have changed enormously since the seventeenth century, and are much more variable today they were then, the significance of role as a metaphor in the characterisation of the Renaissance tragic hero and heroine seems bound to give rise to doubtful interpretations and critical dispute.  I would draw attention here to two critical tendencies which, although obviously distinguishable, share the common assumption that the hero is presented as unable in the nature of things to find his personal identity in any one socially defined role. One of these approaches stems from romantic and existentialist positions suggesting that the individual life in in a developed community is necessarily inauthentic, and that social alienation is prerequisite for self-realisation: it encourages us to see the hero of Renaissance tragedy advencing towards self-discovery as a result of his refusal to play out a given role. The other approach stems from socioanthropological perceptions concerning the plasticity of human nature; it suggests that the hero discovers or uncovers the truth about his self—that it is multiple rather than single, artificial rather than innate—in the very process of acting out many roles. (116)

There is much in the texts to justify these critical perspectives. Moreover, they have the great virtue of highlighting the dramatists' often profound sense of the elusive complexity of the human personality, as well as their recognition of the multiple forces which continually threaten the integrity of the individual. But it may be that they help to conceal at least as much as they reveal. In the first place, it is surely incorrect to speak of the protagonist as moving out of role into character (or vice versa), since the dramatists and their contemporaries took it as axiomatic that charafter without role, like thought without language, is in practical terms non-existent. It is true that role-playing usually begins to catch attention when it is clear that the hero and his world are out of joint. But that is not because playing a part is in itself considered to be unnatural; it is because a part well played is felt to be a harmony of nature and art and so does not call attention to itself. We begin to reflect on the problems of 'acting' when characters have disqualified themselves from playing the part which is properly theirs (Richard II arbitrating in a dispute where he himself is the chief culprit, Beatrice-Joanna rebuking the insolence of a servant whom she has hired to commit murder); or when they assume an alien role in order to reassert themselves (Lear kneeling in mock petition to Goneril, the usurped Duke Altofronto disguised as a railing malcontent), or when their self-regard is ominously tainted with self-ignorance or pride (Othello affirming that Cupid's toys will not interfere with his martial duties, Bussy D'Ambois indulging in 'bravery'); or when self-will and desperation have compelled them along the path of deceit (Juliet playing the obedient daughter to Capulet, the Duchess of Malfi going through the charade of dismissing Antonio as a dishonest servant). Thus, instead of moving from role to character (or character to role), the tragic protagonist is more likely to be seen as exchanging of having to exchange a role which harmonises with the conditions of his nature for another or others which do not: so that in losing his original role he loses himself.

Moreover, rather than uncovering a suppressed identity, or creating a new one, the tragic character more probably acquires a new understanding of his lost self and of those elements in his own and other men's nature which separated him from it. This understanding is often embodied in what is arguably the only pefect piece of theatre and ritual in the Renaissance tragic world—the Noble Death, in which the protagonist is sublimely constant and true to himself. Despite the splendour of this final 'act', the new understanding which gives it moral substance embraces a recognition that the individual is bound and limited, not only self-made but shaped and help in being by a context of relationships—interpersonal, social, and cosmic. Thus the famous words uttered by Webster's heroine at death, 'I am Duchess of Malfi still', are not simply the triumphant assertion of an indestructible personal identity. They are also a reminder from the dramatist that, despite her marriage to her steward, this great lady will always find her identity in the name and duchy of her dead husband. And they are but a prelude to the complete revelation, which comes when the Duchess accepts—on bended knee— Bosola's suggestion that aristocratic pride debars her from self-knowledge and lasting glory. She dies 'like' the Duchess of Malfi indeed, but in a manner which shows what that means in terms of nobilty, frailty, and dependence.

One cannot, however, ascribe to the dramatists of this period any firm belief that the individual will be true to himself, or maintain a sense of his own identity, for very long. Because the self is an unstable synthesis of opposites, 'None can be always one' (117). The psychic life seems here to be a kind of continuing Fall: a banishment from the person one would and should be, and in some sense was; a restless search for self-realisation in roles which too often have the effect of making one feel 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears' (Macbeth, iii.iv.24-5). But however subtle and unremitting their sense of the strange mutations in man's character the tragedians stop short of abandoning the notion of psychic continuity and making metamorphosis a positive. Like Montaigne, who explores with such acuteness the mercuriality of the self, they 'Esteeme it a great matter, to play but one man' (118). In the closely related spheres of psychology and ethics, constancy —which presupposes unity and harmony—remains their primary value. (119)



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(97) Alvin Kernan, "The Henriad: Shakespeare's Major History Plays", YR LIX (1969-70): 3-32, and in The Revels History of the Drama in English, Vol. III:  1576-1613, ed. J. Leeds Barroll, Alexander Leggatt, Richard Hosley and Alvin Kernan (London: Methuen, 1975) pp. 241ff. As Kernan notes, he is developing ideas suggested by C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy

(115) The Duchess of Malfi, IV.ii.289-90. Cf. V.v.85-6., where the dying Bosola refers to himself as 'an actor in the main of all / Much 'gainst mine own good nature'. The Duchess, too, sees herself as an unwilling performer: 'I do account this world a tedious theatre, / For I do play a part in't 'gainst my will' (VI.i.84-5).
(116) See, for instance, Kernan, in YR, LIX 3-32, and The Revels History of the Drama in English, IIII 241ff.; John Holloway, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959) pp. 193-5. The Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies (London: Routledge, 1961) pp. 26-87, 35-6, 57; Hugh P. Richmond, "Personal Identity and Literary Personae: A Study in Historical Psychology",  PMLA, LXXXX (1975): 209-21. Disagreement with Kernan's interpretation of the role metaphor in Shakespeare has been expressed by Philip Edwards in 'Person and Office in Shakespeare's Plays', PBA LVI (1970) 93-109; he does not find in Shakespeare a 'necessary disjunction between the inner self and the public self'.
(117) Bussy D'Ambois, IV.i.25.
(118) Montaigne, Essays, trs. Florio, II 15 (II.i) (Author's emphasis.)
(119) In Role Playing in Shakespeare (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 180, Thomas Van Laan notes that in Shakespeare's tragedies, by contrast with the comedies, 'losing oneself' is not a necessary and ultimately beneficial stage in the progress towards final happiness. It is to lose all, to be torn loose and cast adrift in a void without dimensions . . . an experience that no one can survive.'

Out of Character