In a drama, a tragedy is the occurrence of unfortunate and consequently, disastrous events or circumstances that fall upon the protagonist in the play. Looking back hundreds of years ago we come across playwrights like Shakespeare and Euripides. Both have written some very tragic pieces, but which one wins for writing the most tragic play? A comparison between Hamlet and The Bacchae shows many similarities but also, many differences. This two pieces show very revealing characters enduring human struggle and death.By looking at three vital components in each play, it is easy to see that Hamlet is the more tragic of the two. I will be defining the tragic hero, both mothers in the plays, and looking at irony and how it is used.
In a tragedy, according to Aristotle, a tragic hero is “watching a good man coming to a bad end. ” More specifically, a tragic hero consists of one noble man who meets his unfortunate and untimely death. With this knowledge when comparing the tragic heroes in both plays it is clear that Hamlet fits the criteria for a tragic hero more than Dionysus.The first criteria for a tragic hero is that he is a good man who is highly respected among his community, Hamlet was the king’s son, while Dionysus was not even considered a God in Thebes and the townspeople were forbidden to worship him. Although Hamlet seeks revenge against his uncle, he is not impulsive with his actions.
He contemplates quite a bit about the idea of killing Claudius, showing real human struggle that the audience can relate to. At the end of the play Hamlet dies, creating pathos because he was just a man trying to save his family from the evil that killed his father.Unfortunately things go terribly wrong for him as others plot to kill him. Therefore the audience feels bad for him because his tragic flaw leads him to his untimely death.
As for Dionysus, he does not even die in the end. Sympathy is not created for him because he gets what he wants in the end, and destroys anything that gets in his way. This lessens how much Pathos the audience feels towards Dionysus. Ultimately, in a comparison between a man and a God, the real tragic hero is the man, someone the audience can relate to on a human level.Less sympathy is shown towards the Immortal God with infinite power.
There is a special connection between a mother and her children, one that would drive a mother to do whatever humanly possible to save them. But what happens when your mother is bewitched? Or is completely blind to what is going on around her? In both plays, the mothers play an important role. In the Bacchae, Dionysus casts a spell on all the women in Thebes, including Pentheus’s mother. Towards the end of the play she helps in the tearing of him to pieces and brings his head back to the village thinking that it was the head of a lion.
Once she has come to the realization of what she had done she is horrified and will have to live with that for the rest of her life. Although this is tragic, the fact that Dionysus had all to do with the act makes me direct more anger and disgust towards him for doing such a thing, while still feeling some sympathy for Agave. In Hamlet, Gertrude suffers months of grieving and suffering before coming to her unanticipated death. She first endures the death of her husband, and while she is vulnerable, her brother-in-law swoops in and the two fall in love, ending in their marriage.
After Hamlet is certain that Claudius is the one who killed his father he begins plotting his revenge. He encounters much frustration and begins to become paranoid and go crazy. His mother must sit through all of his episodes and antics and watches him stab Polonius to death. At the end of the play she watches her son fight Laertes in a fencing matching with poison swords and sits next to a poisoned cup that is for Hamlet. Gertrude takes a sip after Claudius tells her not to and she falls to the ground shortly after.
Right before she dies she cries out to Hamlet that the cup must have been poisoned.In the last few moments before she dies, she can no longer protect her son and knows that her husband was trying to kill Hamlet. In Roche’s, Tragedy and Comedy, he states, “Tragedy is an action in which the hero’s greatness leads inexorably to suffering. ” The kind of suffering that Hamlet is most enduring is that of his mother. She is literally sleeping with the enemy, and then drinks from poisoned cup that was meant for her son. The fact that Gertrude dies right before Hamlet, poison by Claudius, is much more tragic than Agave realizing that she has killed her son without actually remembering the act.
Irony plays a major role in both Hamlet and The Bacchae. In The Bacchae, a large part of irony is used as comic relief, the most apparent examples are involving Pentheus. This king parades around Thebes insisting that Dionysus is not a God, even after the town is set fire and his castle begins to fall apart. When Pentheus smugly arrests Dionysus in disguise, he starts casting little spells, manipulating Pentheus’ mind. Pentheus follows the young stranger blindly from one delusion to another, until he is led to his death.
When Pentheus agrees to dress in drag to spy on the Maenads, he asks Dionysus if his posture looks like his mothers and Dionysus even fixes a loose lock of his hair. The biggest examples of dramatic irony is right before Pentheus is torn apart by the maenads he howls his mother’s name in agony, trying to get her to recognise him and stop the attack. She proceeds to pull his arm out of its socket and come back to the Thebes with his head in her hands, thinking it’s that of a lions. Cadmus talks to her and she slowly comes back to reality, realizing she holds the head of Pentheus declaring, “What I see is grief, deep grief, and misery for me! She has to be told about the events that just passed because she does not remember, and she is horrified with what she has done.
The irony of Pentheus and Agave is traumatising but still, the characters in Hamlet take part in much more ironic events. Before the play even begins we know that Hamlet’s father has been murdered and his mother is now married to his murderer. Hamlet kills his girlfriends’ father, thinking it was his mothers’ husband, and later finds out that Ophelia killed herself. By this point Hamlet is really starting to lose his mind. After all, he is just trying to save his family.
At the very end of the play his mother dies, Laertes dies, and Claudius dies before Hamlet collapses and parishes himself. In Sidney Lamb’s book, Tragedy, she states that, “a continuing metaphor in hamlet is that of disease: society itself seems to be infected. ” I think that the entire royal family had become diseased and the only way to get rid of it and to start fresh was for everyone to die, including Hamlet and his mother. The irony is overwhelming because all Claudius wanted to do was be the king, Gertrude wanted to help her son get better, Laertes wanted to avenge his family and Hamlet wanted to save his..
.No one really won in the end. Hamlet and The Bacchae are both deeply tragic plays with very similar features, but Hamlet is a touch more Tragic. In order to make The Bacchae more tragic than Hamlet I would start with what happened before the play began. I would make it so that Semele was tortured by the townspeople for saying she was carrying the baby of Zeus and go into detail about how she was beaten and when Zeus came down to save her, he killed her.
Pentheus’s mother would have woken out of her spell while tearing her son apart, and I would have Dionysus be so vengeful that he would destroy the whole town in his anger.For Hamlet I would have him wrestle Polonius from behind the curtain and realize it wasn’t Claudius before he killed him. During the sword fight, the cup wouldn’t be poisoned, only the tip of Laertes sword. The fight would end in the two swapping swords, Hamlet cutting Laertes, and then Laertes would call out that the sword was poisoned and unveil Claudius’s plan to kill Hamlet. Hamlet would then turn around and stab Claudius. This would give the audience hope for Hamlet and his mother, being able to start a new life, while in The Bacchae, it ends with Dionysus getting his way and Thebes gets destroyed.
There is no point in performing a play if it does not provoke some kind of response from the audience, and these two take the audience and an emotional journey, both ending in heartbreak. After studying about the concept of tragedy, there is no doubt that these two plays are text book examples of it. But because there is more irony in Hamlet, much more suffering by his mother before her death, and Hamlet being a tragic hero just trying to save his family, there is no doubt that Hamlet is the more tragic play.
