In English drama, a domestic tragedy is a tragedy in which the tragic protagonists are ordinary middle-class or working-class individuals. This subgenre contrasts with classical and Neoclassical tragedy, in which the protagonists are of kingly or aristocratic rank and their downfall is an affair of state as well as a personal matter. These plays were in particular contrast to De casibus tragedy like De casibus virorum illustrium by Giovanni Boccaccio
The Ancient Greek theorist Aristotle had argued that tragedy should concern only great individuals with great minds and souls, because their catastrophic downfall would be more emotionally powerful to the audience; only comedy should depict middle-class people. Domestic tragedy breaks with Aristotle's precepts, taking as its subjects merchants or citizens whose lives have less consequence in the wider world.
In Britain, the first domestic tragedies were written in the English Renaissance; one of the first was Arden of Faversham (1592), depicting the murder of a bourgeois man by his adulterous wife. Other famous examples are A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), and The Witch of Edmonton (1621).[1]Othello can be classified as a domestic tragedy.[2]
Domestic tragedy disappeared during the era of Restoration drama, when Neoclassicism dominated the stage, but it emerged again with the work of George Lillo and Sir Richard Steele in the eighteenth century.
^Keith Sturgess; Thomas Heywood (23 February 2012). Three Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies: Arden of Faversham; a Yorkshire Tragedy; a Woman Killed with Kindness. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-241-96146-9.
^Sean Benson (15 December 2011). Shakespeare, 'Othello' and Domestic Tragedy. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 10–. ISBN 978-1-4411-3766-1.
In English drama, a domestictragedy is a tragedy in which the tragic protagonists are ordinary middle-class or working-class individuals. This subgenre...
essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) argues that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings thus defining Domestictragedies. British...
Othello (/ɒˈθɛloʊ/; full title: The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, around 1603. The story revolves...
A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestictragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare,...
century England (see domestictragedy), but only in the 18th century did the general attitude change. The first true bourgeois tragedy was an English play:...
part in the Romagnole Wars and factions. He is chiefly famous for the domestictragedy of 1285, recorded in Dante's Inferno, when, having detected his wife...
of Renaissance drama's achievement in the subgenre of bourgeois or domestictragedy. The play was originally performed by Worcester's Men, the company...
is best known for his masterpiece A Woman Killed with Kindness, a domestictragedy, which was first performed in 1603 at the Rose Theatre by the Worcester's...
popularity. The Love Suicides at Sonezaki was Chikamatsu's first "domestictragedy" or "domestic play" (sewamono) and his first love-suicide play (shinjūmono)...
The play is notable as perhaps the earliest surviving example of domestictragedy, a form of Renaissance play which dramatized recent and local crimes...
So he adds an epilogue-like final chapter, turning the Wheelers' domestictragedy into, exactly, a story that their neighbours tell. Bercovitch, Sacvan;...
something that would later be called tragédie bourgeoise, or domestictragedy—that is, the tragedy of common life—were more popular in England because they...
Marc (6 December 2019). "History Canada: Dec. 6, 1917 Canada's worst domestictragedy". Radio Canada International. Allen, Victoria (July 2011). "Barometer...
became absorbed into a new genre called domestictragedy beginning around the mid-18th century. These tragedies intended to use real-life situations, settings...
25 May 2023. "Terrible DomesticTragedy". Birmingham Daily Post. 23 July 1901. p. 5. Retrieved 3 August 2023. "Terrible Tragedy at Charlton". Evening Telegraph...
Press. ISBN 9780802081636. For the pleasure of the entire family, this domestictragedy/comedy revolves around the eternal triangle: Madame, Monsieur and the...
Ford in 1621. The play—"probably the most sophisticated treatment of domestictragedy in the whole of Elizabethan-Jacobean drama"—is based on events that...
jidaimono (時代物) (historical romances) and 24 are sewamono (世話物) (domestictragedies). The domestic plays are today considered the core of his artistic achievement...
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean-era drama written by Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, and first published in 1613. There...
success at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane. It was a new kind of play, a domestictragedy, which approximates to what later came to be called a melodrama. 1738:...
time." Time critic Richard Corliss wrote, "The Squid and the Whale is domestictragedy recollected as comedy: a film whose catalog of deceits and embarrassments...
2019-02-15. Retrieved 2020-04-16. "50 Best Plays of All Time: Comedies, Tragedies and Dramas Ranked". Time Out New York. Retrieved 2020-04-16. Poitier,...
tale as "curiously minor and somehow unsatisfying...a sordid little domestictragedy...wholly lacking in the sort of cosmic vision that makes Lovecraft's...
the Francophile cardinals Colonna and Savelli. Then occurred a major domestictragedy for the house of Borgia. On 14 June, his son the Duke of Gandia, who...
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