Lesson video

Hello and welcome to the Oak National Academy for English.

My name is Mr. James.

And today we're going to begin a short series of lessons on something called tragedy.

Now, if you're unsure exactly what tragedy is, don't worry about that because we will look at it as we go through the lessons, but let's have a look at what we'll learn today.

Well, firstly, we'll look at Greek tragedy.

Secondly, we'll look at the conventions of Greek tragedy.

Thirdly, we're going to look at Shakespearean tragedy, number four, we're going to look at the differences between Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, and five, we're going to do a quiz on the things we have learned.

But before we do any of those things, we need to make sure we have the correct equipment for today's lesson.

So number one, you're going to need a pen.

Number two, you're going to need some paper, and number three, you're going to need your brain.

Now, if you're missing any of those things, pause the video now, go and get your equipment, and come back when you are done.

Okay.

Welcome back.

Well, now you have your equipment.

The first thing I would like you to do is to write today's title.

It's on the screen now.

So take your pen, write the title, pause the video, and come back when you are done.

Off you go.

Okay.

So let's begin by asking the question, what is tragedy? Well, tragedy is a genre of play.

That means it's a type of play and in a tragedy, a character who is respected or admired dies at the end of the play or at the end of the story.

And we call this character the tragic hero.

Now I'm not going to talk too much more about what tragedy is, at this moment, because as we move through these series of three lessons, we will find out more about tragedy.

But the key thing to remember is a tragedy involves a respected or admired character dying at the end.

Now, it's not just any character dying at the end.

If a baddie dies at the end of a story, that's not a tragedy.

In fact, we're usually quite happy about a bad character dying at the end.

So a tragedy is when a good or admired character dies at the end of the story.

That is what makes it tragic.

Now we're going to begin by looking at Greek tragedy.

So Greek tragedy began in strangely enough, ancient Greece, and that was over two and a half thousand years ago, a long time.

So to watch the plays, people would pile into what we call amphitheatres.

And there's one of those on the right hand screen of your, the right hand side of your screen now, a picture of a ancient Greek amphitheatre that's been preserved and it's still used occasionally today.

Now, thousands and thousands of people or men, I should say, because it was just men, not women, were, would pile into these amphitheatres to watch the plays.

And the atmosphere was more akin, was more alike, a modern football match than a modern trip to the theatre.

It was raucous and bawdy and loud, and people would shout and scream at the place.

Now, most of these plays were performed in a festival called the City Dionysia.

So they weren't performed all year round in the way they were now, most of them were performed during this festival, although I'm sure there were plays performed at other time of year.

And at the end of the festival, a winner would be chosen.

So the best play or the best playwright will be chosen at the big, at the end of that festival.

Now the festival Dionysia was a fairly controversial time of the year for the Greeks, I mean, most of them enjoyed it.

It lasted for seven days.

It was in honour of the god Dionysus.

That's why it was called the festival Dionysia.

And he was the kind of god who was always mad and usually drunk, being the god of insanity and also wine-making.

Alongside that though he was also the god of theatre, which is why the plays became part of the festival to honour the god Dionysus.

Now, the festival lasted for seven days, and alongside plays, there was many celebrations.

People would lie in the streets and generally behave terribly because as I said, he was the god of wine-making and insanity.

And you put those two things together, give people a lot of wine, and tell them to behave in a slightly mad way, you're going to get quite a lot of mad occurrences, I would say.

So the festival itself was quite a raucous event.

I imagine there was quite a lot of recovery that had to go on at the end of the seven days, but that's the kind of thing that the Greeks liked to do at the festival Dionysia.

So on the one hand, there was a place that was quite raucous and it was also part of a much bigger and more rowdy festival.

Now, the winners of the festival Dionysia contained some of the most famous playwrights in history.

For example, the playwright Sophocles who wrote Oedipus, you've also got a playwright called Euripides, and another called Aeschylus.

These are extremely famous playwrights.

We don't have that many plays that survived from ancient Greece, because obviously it was, you know, two and a half thousand years ago, but the ones we do, the plays we do have, by playwrights such as these, are extremely, extremely famous and had a huge impact on human culture ever since.

So, let's ask ourselves some quick questions then about Greek tragedy.

When did it begin? Was it over two and a half thousand years ago? Or was it over 5,000 years ago? I'm going to give you five seconds now to make your choice.

So think about it in your head.

And what have you decided? Was it over two and a half thousand years ago or over 500 years ago? Well, the correct answer is over 2,500 years ago Greek tragedy began.

So we're really lucky to still have some of these plays.

The next question says, what was the name of the festival in which the plays were performed? Was the festival called Dionysia or was it called Athens? You've got five seconds to make your choice.

And the correct answer is, Dionysia, Dionysia that's the name of the festival.

The festival took place in Athens, but the festival itself was called Dionysia.

The next question says, which word best describes the festival? Do you think you would describe it as crazy or polite? Five seconds.

What do you think? And, the correct answer would be crazy.

Yes, of course it was quite a crazy, mad, slightly insane festival, the City Dionysia.

So that would be the best word to describe it.

And how long did the festival last? Was it just one evening or was it seven days? What do you think? Five seconds, make your choice.

And the correct answer is of course, seven days.

Yes, so there was seven days of madness and insanity.

Now, so we've looked at the festival Dionysia.

We're now going to look at another Greek man.

And this one is called Aristotle.

This man's called Aristotle and Aristotle was really influential on the development of tragedy.

So he's one of the most famous philosophers who has ever lived out, Aristotle.

And he really did like to write about tragedy.

Now on the right of your screen, you can see a statue of Aristotle that survived for thousands of years.

Although of course, on the statue on the right, he doesn't appear to have any eyeballs.

And I assume in real life he did.

So how accurate it is, I can't verify it.

Now, what did Aristotle believe about tragedy? Well, he believed that tragedy should be a complete whole, or a unity.

And what he means by that is the play should be one complete thing.

It shouldn't kind of veer off in lots of different directions.

It should be nice and understandable and one complete whole.

And in order to do this, he talked about what he called the three unities, and he said that tragedy should have a unity of time, place, and action.

Now that doesn't make much sense at the moment, unity of time, place, and action, so what I'm going to do is take those things one by one and explain them in a little bit more detail.

So the unity of time, and essentially what Aristotle is saying here is that ideally, the story should happen over a few hours or at most one day.

Now that's not the play should happen over the course of one day, because that would be a very long play.

But the time in the play, the action in the play should take place over no more than the course of one day or ideally just a few hours.

So this makes it easy for the audience to follow because they don't have to move through time to imagine what's happening.

It's just a story that happens over a few hours.

So because of that, he says, you get a unity of time.

Now also he said, you should have a unity of place.

And again, this is actually quite straightforward.

All the action should take place in one location.

So the audience don't have to imagine moving from one location to another location, to another location, to another one, while they're at the theatre.

When we watch a film today, that's much easier, because we can see the different locations, but at the theatre, of course, you have to imagine all the different locations and remember where all the different locations are.

So Aristotle said, actually, you should just have unity of place or unity of location.

All the actions would take place really in one location or one setting.

And lastly, he said, there should be unity of action.

And basically by this, he means there should be one plot.

There shouldn't be any subplot to distract from the main story.

So if you're telling a story, you just tell that story.

Don't get, don't get sidetracked by trying to tell other stories along the way, like little subplots, little stories about other characters who are in there.

So just have it in one setting with one story and taking place over just a few hours.

And he called those the three unities.

But why was he interested in these three unities? Well, Aristotle believed that the audience should be able to understand the tragedy without any difficulty.

He was saying, look, let's not make it harder than it needs to be to understand the story or to understand the tragedy, and to make it easier, we should simplify things.

We should make sure it just takes place in one place, in one location.

We should make sure it doesn't take place over too long a period of time, and there should only be one story.

It shouldn't be lots of subplots to make it easy for the audience to understand what is going on.

Now, the reason he believed it should be easy for the audience to understand is because he wanted them to experience something called, catharsis.

Okay? Catharsis.

Now I'll talk more about that in a minute.

Aristotle believed that if the play was easy to understand, it would be easier for the audience to experience catharsis.

Now, what is catharsis? Well, before we go on, I want you to think about a time when you've maybe been a bit upset and you've had perhaps a little cry, and then after you've had your little cry, you've come out feeling a lot better.

Yeah.

Can you imagine a time when that's happened? So you've had a little cry 'cause you've been feeling upset and then after you've had you cry, after you've talked about what's making you upset perhaps, actually you felt a lot better.

What I'd like you to do is perhaps pause the video and write note down a time when that has happened.

So pause the video, note that down, come back when you're done.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

What have you written? I'm sure between everyone who is watching this, you've got a whole range of times when actually you felt a little bit sad, you've had a cry, maybe you've talked about your emotions, and afterwards you come out feeling a lot better.

Well, that experience is roughly what Aristotle means by catharsis, is that experience of going through your emotions, releasing them by talking about them or having a little cry and then actually feeling a lot better afterwards.

It's as if you've cleaned yourself or perhaps cleansed yourself of the emotion.

And sometimes imagine you've been reading a story or watching a film, for example, you might have had that same experience.

You've been really sad about what the characters are going through.

You've had a little cry and actually afterwards you end up feeling happier, 'cause you've got rid of that sadness, that emotion.

If you've been through that before, you've experienced catharsis.

So catharsis is about cleaning or cleansing emotion.

So Aristotle believed that a tragedy should arouse emotions, in particularly, the emotion of pity or sadness, and the audience should experience these emotions so that they leave the theatre feeling cleansed and uplifted.

And that is catharsis, that feeling of experiencing the emotions, going through them, coming out the other side, actually feeling better or cleansed of the emotions, and then going on with your life, that's catharsis.

And Aristotle said, that's the point of tragedy, is so we can experience pity, sadness, and learn from those emotions, but without actually having to be experience or be sad, in our own lives.

It's a safe way for us to become more experienced at dealing with the bad aspects of life.

And when we go through those emotions, that's called catharsis.

So let's ask ourselves a quick question here.

It says, what is catharsis? And there's four options below.

You've got number one, catharsis is another word for pity.

Number two, catharsis is another word for emotion.

Number three, catharsis is a feeling of being cleansed of negative emotion, or number four, catharsis is being happy when the story is over.

Now, we've got four options here.

Only one of them is correct.

Now think about it carefully, because there is a couple of sneaky little trick questions in there to trip you up.

There's only one correct answer here.

What do you think it is? I'm going to give you 10 seconds to think about it.

Off you go.

Okay.

Let's have a look at what the correct answer is.

What did you choose? Well, hopefully you chose option three, because that is the correct answer.

Catharsis is the feeling of being cleansed after experiencing negative emotion, because you've gone through it.

And there's a couple of tricky ones in there, it's not being happy when the story is over.

And it's not just another word for pity or emotion.

It's that feeling of being cleansed of negative emotion after you've experienced it.

So here's another question.

This one says, why did Aristotle believe in the three unities? So was it one? So the audience don't get confused about where the play is set.

Number two, so the audience don't get confused about how long the play is.

Number three, so the audience don't get confused about what the play is actually about.

Or number four, so the audience don't get confused and can experience catharsis.

So only one of these is correct.

Now remember, the question isn't what are the three unities, it's why did Aristotle believe in the three unities? So which option do you think explains why Aristotle believed in the three unities? One answer is correct.

I'm going to give you about 10 seconds to make your choice.

So have a think about it, now.

Okay.

So hopefully you have made your selection and hopefully you have chosen the correct answer, which is option four.

It is option four.

So the audience don't get confused and can experience catharsis.

The unities themselves don't cause catharsis, but it means the audience can concentrate on the play and the emotions rather than wondering, hang on, where are we? What's going on? Those kind of things, and make it nice and simple, so the audience can experience catharsis in a tragedy.

So what I would now like you to do is pause the video and copy and complete the sentences that are on screen.

There's some missing words, but the missing words are provided for you in bold, at the bottom.

So pause the video, complete the task and come back to me when you are done.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at how you did.

Well, hopefully you got an answer that looks like this.

Aristotle believed in the three unities.

He thought plays should have one setting, one plot, and take place over a maximum of one day.

Catharsis is a feeling of being cleansed after releasing strong emotions, such as pity.

And if you've got all those correct, I'm really impressed.

So well done.

So we've learned loads already this lesson.

We've learned about tragedy and what it is.

We've learned about ancient Greece and where tragedy began and the festival Dionysia.

And we've learned about Aristotle and the unities and catharsis.

We've learned so much already this lesson, and now we're going to move on to a guy you might have heard of called William Shakespeare.

So around 2000 years, after the beginnings of tragedy in Greece, pops a guy called William Shakespeare, and Mr. Shakespeare, well, he loved a tragedy and he wrote loads of them.

And in fact, our most famous tragedies are pretty much exclusively written by William Shakespeare.

Plays, such as, MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar.

Now Julius Caesar is a Shakespeare play that also, you can do a unit on, on Oak Academy.

So if you're interested in tragedy and you want to study one of the most famous ones ever in human history, you can study Julius Caesar on Oak Academy.

Now, we're going to have a quick talk about Shakespeare's theatre, which he called the Globe.

Now, William Shakespeare's tragedies were performed at the Globe theatre in London, and you can actually go there and visit it now.

Now, it's not the same Globe theatre.

It was burnt down about 450 years ago, but they recently rebuilt a very similar version of the Globe theatre, on a very similar site, just about 200 yards away from where the original theatre was built.

So if you do want to go and see a Shakespeare play in roughly what it might've looked like during Shakespeare's lifetime, you can go to the Globe theatre in London, which I think is pretty cool.

And during Shakespeare's lifetime, performances at the Globe theatre were quite like, remarkably like, the festival Dionysia, really.

The crowd was quite rowdy.

It wasn't like going to a modern theatre performance where everyone's very polite and quiet and, and sat down nicely listening.

It was much more, again like the atmosphere, you might get at a football match.

And in fact, people would even throw things at the performers on stage if they weren't too happy with the performance.

So you can see the similarity between performances at the Globe 500 years ago and performances of the festival Dionysia 2,500 years ago.

So at the Shakespearean Globe, which you can see on the right, there was a different kinds of seating and different kinds of expense levels, depending on who you are.

Now, the ordinary people, or the poor people as they were at the time, were called groundlings.

And they would pay just a penny to watch the play from the pit, which is the area that you can see in the photo, where the people are standing and watching the play.

Now, the nobles, the people who were richer, they would buy the expensive seats and you can see those around the edge in the seating.

So they would buy the seating that surrounded the edge of the theatre.

And occasionally even royalty would turn up and they would sit alongside the nobles, but they would sit in the seats directly facing the stage.

So they would get the best view for everyone.

So, let's just have a quick think about William Shakespeare.

And the first thing I would like you to do is pause the video now and think back to what I said at the beginning and note down at least three of Shakespeare tragedies, note down the name of at least three of Shakespeare's tragedies.

Off you go.

Okay.

Welcome back.

So what did you get? Well, let's have a look at the options you could have had.

You could have had Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, or Julius Caesar.

So if you got any three of those five, I'll be really impressed.

Well done.

Now we're going to have a quick few questions that we're going to run through here.

And the first question says, what were the names of the people who stood in the pit at the Globe, who stood in the pit of the Globe? Was it the nobles or was it the groundlings? Five seconds to make your choice.

Okay.

And the correct answer is the groundlings.

Yes, they were the people, they paid a penny to stand in the pit and watch the play.

So what were the names of the people who sat in the seats at the Globe? Was that the nobles or the groundlings who sat in the seats? Five seconds.

And it was of course, the nobles.

Yes, the groundlings, remember were the people who stood in the pit and watched the play from there.

Next, I would like you to tell me about which of these options is correct? So each of them has a statement that compares Greek tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy.

And what I would like you to tell me is which statement is correct? So the first statement says Greek audiences were polite, but the Shakespearean audiences were rowdy.

The second option says both Greek and Shakespearean audiences were rowdy.

The third statement, the third option says, Shakespearean audiences were polite, but Greek audiences were rowdy.

And the fourth option says both audiences were polite.

Now, which of those options do you think is correct? One, two, three, or four.

I'm going to give you about 10 seconds to read through them again and make your choice.

Off you go.

Okay.

So which have you chosen? What do you think? Well, hopefully you have chosen option number two, because that is the correct one, both Greek and Shakespearean audiences were rowdy.

Yes, a trip to the theatre in either ancient Greece or Shakespeare's England was a fairly raucous affair.

So we've learned a bit about the background of Shakespearean tragedy, but let's have a look at Shakespearean tragedy.

So Shakespeare changed tragedy.

He changed it.

That means he made some alterations to how tragic plays happened or what happened in the plays.

And the first thing he did was he got rid of Aristotle's unities.

All of a sudden he wasn't so interested in just having them take place in one location or over a short period of time.

I mean, sometimes he did, but not always.

And there's definitely lots of subplots in most of Shakespeare's tragedies.

There's not just the one main story.

So, that's the first thing, he got rid of Aristotle's unities.

Also, Shakespeare added in some additional things for good measure.

Often, there's comedy in Shakespeare's tragedies, or at least a comic character, who gives some light relief to all the tragic things that are happening and provides a few laughs for the audience along the way.

He also includes quite a lot of magic and supernatural.

And occasionally, you get magical supernatural in Greek tragedy, but when it is, it tends to be around a fate or destiny or gods, whereas in a Shakespeare it's often around, kind of witches and witchcraft and magic.

So he adds in the kind of magic and supernatural element.

And he also includes violence.

Now there was violence in Greek tragedy, but you would never see it on stage.

It was often implied or sang about by some singers who were on stage called the chorus.

The audience really wouldn't see the violence acted out as they would in Shakespearean tragedy.

Now, the most important thing to remember is that while Shakespeare changed tragedy a little bit, he still kept the most important things.

So Shakespearean tragedy was still about a character who is respected or admired and who dies at the end of the story.

That he didn't change.

Because if you take that away, it's really not a tragedy anymore.

So Shakespearean tragedy was still about a respected or admired character who dies at the end of the story, but Shakespeare did update some other things that are in his tragedies, such as adding in comedy, getting rid of the three unities, or including some supernatural elements, because he wanted his tragedies to appeal more to his contemporary audience.

And contemporary means his audience at the time.

So, I'm going to end today's lesson by just asking you a few quick questions about what we have learned.

And the first question is here.

It says Shakespeare's tragedies were the same as Greek tragedies.

Was that true or false? You've got five seconds to make your choice now.

Off you go.

Okay.

And hopefully you've chosen the answer, false.

Shakespeare's tragedies were not the same as Greek tragedies.

Remember, we said he changed them in some ways.

Now this question says, what did Shakespeare get rid of? So did he get rid of the three unities, Aristotle's three unities, or did he get rid of comedy? Five seconds to make your choice.

And the correct answer is that Shakespeare got rid of the three unities.

Hopefully you got that.

I'm sure you did, well done.

Okay.

So the next question says, why did Shakespeare change tragedy? Was it because he couldn't speak Greek? Or was it because he wanted it to appeal to a more contemporary audience? Make your choice.

Tell me what you think.

And the correct answer is of course that he wanted it to appeal to his contemporary audience.

That's why he changed it, he updated it, if you like, for the times as they change.

Now, guys, you've done really well today.

And it's been a real privilege for me to be able to teach you here at the Oak National Academy.

There is just one thing left for you to do, and that is to take the quiz based on today's lesson.

And it's really important because it will consolidate everything you've learned and remind you about all the things you have learned.

There's a button down below, and you can use those buttons to make sure you go and take the quiz.

But the last thing for me to say is well done today.

I'm really proud of you.

I'm really pleased with the work you've done and I'll see you next time for lesson two on tragedy, here at the Oak National Academy.