In this seminar we will read three great plays, all of them called "tragedies." We will begin by trying to work out something intelligible about that distracting and much-abused ancient Greek word for a "goat's song." Once we get a sense of what the word means, we will then put it away and look closely at our three plays.
Oedipus the King-also called Oedipus Rex and Oedipus Tyrannos-was written by Sophocles (496-405 B.C.) in 427 or 426 B.C., and was first seen at the Festival of Dionysus in 426 B.C. Three tragedians were chosen each year to present three tragedies each at the festival. Each tragedian had one afternoon in the Theatre of Dionysus at the base of the Akropolis in Athens. On the fourth day, four comedians presented one play each.
Oedipus the King is probably the most famous play in Western history. Its only rival for that honor is The Tragedy of Hamlet, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an Irishman who spent most of his ninety-four years in England. During his career he saw 58 of his plays staged-and each of them, when published, appeared with an author's preface which was usually longer than the play itself. He called his plays variously "comedies," "plays pleasant," and "plays unpleasant." One of them, St. Joan (1924) he called a "tragedy."
When we have talked about all three plays, we will return to that word "tragedy." Maybe we can save it from abuse, misuse, and uselessness. Maybe there is something we can identify that can make all three of our plays meaningfully tragic? Our main purpose, of course, is to understand the plays. But since all three are called "tragedies"-Oedipus because of where and when it was first produced, Hamlet and St. Joan because their authors called them such-we can enrich our understanding of these plays, individually and in relation to each other, by talking-again-about tragedy.
We will use the David Grene translation of Oedipus the King, available in the volume Sophocles I from the University of Chicago Press. Unless you can read the play in its original Greek, you need to read it in this translation. We don't all need to use the same editions of Hamlet and St. Joan, so long as they have line numbers. Let me recommend to you the New Cambridge Hamlet, edited by Phillip Edwards, and the Penguin St. Joan, edited by Dan H. Laurence.
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