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Eugene Scribe solidified the well-made play formula, and contributed roughly 300 works to the dramatic literature canon in the form of various styles of plays and opera libretti. The form of this new genre does not involve newly invented building blocks of playwrighting. Instead, the well-made play form is an ordered collection of devices used throughout history dating back to Aristotle and his ideal Tragedy based upon dramatic structure in Ancient Greece. Scribe combined familiar devices in a unique way that paces the reveal of information which builds towards a climactic obligatory scene and denouement. The well-made play can be broken down, as Stephen S. Stanton illustrates in his introduction to Camille and Other Plays, into a series of steps. The story depends upon a key piece of information kept from some characters, but known to others (and to the audience). The reveal of this information to all, leads, in the climax, to the triumph of the hero, with whom the audience sympathizes, over his/her rival. This scene constitutes a climactic reversal of fortune, or peripeteia, which follows a series of escalating actions that perpetrated a series of minor reversals in the previous scenes. The rising action is set up by exposition in the early scenes to explain what lead to the play's inciting incident. Devices such as qui pro quo, letters, props, coincidental entrances and exits, and the controlled exposure of secrets assists the intensifying actions to a climax and dénouement that ties up all remaining plot points in a logical way.

Example: The Glass of Water
The Glass of Water is one of Scribe's better-known well-made plays. Based on an episode of English history, it exhibits typical well-made play traits such as the late point of attack, suspenseful plot complications that rely heavily on coincidence, limited character development, and a climactic obligatory scene involving qui pro quo followed by the untying of remaining plot complications. Below are the list of characters, a French scene breakdown of act 1 to illustrate each event's function, plus a description of the rest of the play.

Dramatis Personae

 * HENRY ST. John, Viscount Bolingbroke
 * MARQUIS DE TORCY
 * ARTHUR MASHAM
 * ABIGAIL CHURCHILL
 * SARAH CHURCHILL, Duchess of Marlborough
 * ANNE, Queen of England
 * THOMPSON, the Queen's doorkeeper
 * LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COURT
 * MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

Works Cited 2/11/15
1. "problem play". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2015. Web. 10 Feb. 2015

2. "well-made play". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2015. Web. 10 Feb. 2015

3. Cardwell, Douglas. "The Well-Made Play of Eugène Scribe," French Review (1983): 876-884. JSTOR. Web.10 Feb. 2015.

4. Gethner, Perry. "Molière as Red Herring: Intertextual Strategies in Scribe," South Central Review 8.4 (1991): 17-27. JSTOR. 10 Feb. 2015.

5. Goldman, Emma. The Social Significance of Modern Drama, New York: Applause, 1987. Print.

6. Hornby, Richard. "The Social Problem Play", The Hudson Review 51.4 (1999): 751-758. JSTOR. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

7. Innes, Christopher D. Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century, UK: Cambridge UP, 1992. Print.

8. Kushner, Tony. Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays, James Fischer, ed. North Carolina: McFarland & Co. Inc., 2006. Print.

9. Stanton, Stephen S. "Shaw's Debt to Scribe", PMLA 76.5 (1961): 575-585. JSTOR. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

10. Taylor, John Russell. The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play, Great Britain: Routledge Revivals, Cox and Wyman, Ltd.,1967. Print.

11. Taylor, Thomas J. Cumberland. "Kotzebue, Scribe, Simon: Are We Teaching the Wrong Playwrights?," College English, 43.1 (1981): 45-50. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

12. Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Lily Bart and the Drama of Femininity," American Literary History 6.1 (1994): 71-87. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

Hamartia in Aristotle’s Poetics:
Hamartia is first described in the subject of literary criticism by Aristotle in his Poetics. The term hamartia appears once in Poetics, but scholars throughout the ages have continued to discuss the meaning and usage of the term. The source of the concept of hamartia is at the juncture between Character and the character's actions or behaviors as outlined by Aristotle. Below is a quote from Poetics defining Character:

"Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the agents, i.e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid"

Here Aristotle distinguishes between Plot (Fable), and Character and Thought: "...the subject represented also is an action; and the action involves agents, who must necessarily have their distinctive qualities both of character and thought, since it is from these that we ascribe certain qualities to their actions. There are in the natural order of things, therefore, two causes, Character and Thought, of their actions, and consequently of their success or failure in their lives. Now the action (that which was done) is represented in the play by the Fable or Plot. The Fable, in our present sense of the term, is simply this, the combination of the incidents, or things done in the story; whereas Character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the agents..."

Hamartia is the inner quality of a protagonist that initiates a "movement of spirit" within him/her to commit actions which drive the Plot towards a reversal of fortune (peripeteia), inspiring in the audience a build of pity and fear and cathartic release.

Hamartia in Christian Theology:
Hamartia is also used in Christian Theology. The literal Greek meaning "to miss the mark" is applied as a Fall from the Godly, or sin. In his writings, Paul the Apostle describes three usages for the term ″hamartia″. The term is employed in one sense to mean acts of sin themselves. It is also used in reference to man's sinful condition, or original sin. The third application concerns the weakness of the flesh, and the free will to either resist or commit sinful acts.

Tragic Error or Tragic Flaw:
Scholars continue to debate nuance of the definition of hamartia. The debate centers around two interpretations, tragic error and tragic flaw. Gravitation along the spectrum towards one meaning or the other depends upon the aesthetic of the time. Aristotle's description of the term, translated by S.H. Butcher as an error of judgment, allows room for interpretations that include a mistake of fact, a tendency towards certain mistakes because of moral weakness, or a combination of the two in varying degrees. . Whether the character can inspire pity and fear provides goalposts for the degree of morality present. “The best tragedy is so composed as to arouse pity and terror. Firstly it is clear that morally good men must not be shown passing from good fortune to bad; this does not arouse pity or fear but is repulsive. Nor must a morally vicious man be shown passing from bad fortune to good, for this does not satisfy our human feeling, nor does it arouse pity or fear. Nor again must the very crooked man be shown falling from good fortune into bad; this arrangement would satisfy human feeling but would not arouse pity or fear. For pity is concerned with unmerited misfortune, fear with a character like ourselves. There remains the intermediate kind of character: not pre-eminent in moral excellence, nor falling into misfortune through vice and depravity, but through some error of judgment,”

Isabel Hyde discusses the type of hamartia Aristotle meant to define in the Modern Language Review, “Thus it may be said by some writers to be the ‘tragic flaw’ of Oedipus that he was hasty in temper; of Samson that he was sensually uxorious; of Macbeth that he was excessively ambitious; of Othello that he was proud and jealous - and so on… but these things do not constitute the ‘hamartia of those characters in Aristotle’s sense” (Hyde 321). This explains that Aristotle did not describe hamartia as an error of character, but as a moral mistake or ignorant error. Even J. L. Moles comments on the idea that hamartia is considered an error and states, “the modern view (at least until recently) that it means ‘error’, ‘mistake of fact’, that is, an act done in ignorance of some salient circumstances” (Moles 49).

Hyde goes on to question the meaning of true hamartia and discovers that it is in fact error in the article, “The Tragic Flaw: Is It a Tragic Error?” She claims that the true hamartia that occurs in Oedipus is considered “his ignorance of his true parentage” that led him to become “unwittingly the slayer of his own father” (Hyde 322). This example can be applied when reading literature in regards to the true definition of hamartia and helps place the character’s actions into the categories of character flaws and simple mistakes all humans commit. Within Oedipus, it is apparent that these errors are the result of hamartia caused by the gods and these tragic actions occur because tragedy has been willed upon the characters. R. D. Dawe brings this use of hamartia in literature to the forefront in the article “Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia” found in Harvard Studies of Classical Philology. For instance, “this hamartia is in reality as predestined as the incest and parricide and belongs to the category of the ‘forced error’… from the artistic point of view it provides the satisfactory illusion of a voluntary choice” (Dawe 118-119). This forced error is caused by the gods and the hamartia the characters engage in has been predestined since their birth. (In relation to Ate and Hamartia relationship, see also Golden's article)

Another example of hamartia in Greek tragedy is Antigone. Although she has been presented with the decree from her Uncle not to bury her brother and her obsession with her dead family ties initially gets her in trouble, the true hamartia or “error” in this tragedy rests on Creon. It occurs when he orders his men to properly bury Polynices before releasing Antigone which can be identified as the mistake or error that led to her death. Creon’s own ignorance causes the hamartia that results in Antigone’s death and Dawe agrees here, “Creon believed himself to be acting rightly in the interests of the city. Antigone, Haemon, Tiresias, the chorus and Creon himself (post eventum) recognize that he is in fact mistaken” (Dawe 113). Many characters have flaws that influence their decisions to act in a certain way yet they make mistakes, only to realize them later. True Aristotelian hamartia arises when mistakes or errors cause the plot or direction of action to change in a tragic way as described in the tragedies of Antigone and Oedipus.

History of hamartia in Aristotelian interpretation
Aristotle uses the term hamartia in his book Poetics, and through the years the word has been interpreted differently. Many modern scholars have argued that the meaning of the word that was traditionally given in interpreting Aristotle’s book is not really the correct meaning, and that there is another meaning of the word. In the article “Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle,” the scholar J.M. Bremer first explained the general argument of the poetics and, in particular, the immediate context of the term. He then traces the semasiological history of the hamart-group of the words from Homer (who also tried to determine the meaning behind the word) and Aristotle, concluding that of the three possible meanings of hamartia (missing, error, offense), the Stagirite uses the second in our passage of Poetics. It is, then a “tragic error", i.e., a wrong action committed in ignorance of its nature, effect, etc., which is the starting point of a causally connected train of events ending in disaster.

"Tragic flaw"
While the traditional popular rendering of hamartia as "tragic flaw" (or "fatal flaw") is broadly imprecise and often misleading, it cannot be ruled out that the term as Aristotle understood it could sometimes at least partially connote a failure of morals or character:

Whether Aristotle regards the “flaw” as intellectual or moral has been hotly discussed. It may cover both senses. The hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he must cause it by making a fatal mistake, an error of judgement, which may well involve some imperfection of character but not such as to make us regard him as “morally responsible” for the disasters although they are nevertheless the consequences of the flaw in him, and his wrong decision at a crisis is the inevitable outcome of his character (cf. Aristot. Poet. 6.24.).

Aeschylus' The Persians provides a good example of one's character contributing to his hamartia. Xerxes' error would be his decision to invade Greece, as this invasion ends disastrously for him and Persia. Yet this error is inextricably bound up in Xerxes' chief character flaw: his hubris. A morally tinged understanding of hamartia such as this can and has been applied to the protagonist of virtually every Greek tragedy. For example, Peter Struck comments on Oedipus the King:

The complex nature of Oedipus' "hamartia," is also important. The Greek term "hamartia," typically translated as "tragic flaw," actually is closer in meaning to a "mistake" or an "error," "failing," rather than an innate flaw. In Aristotle's understanding, all tragic heroes have a "hamartia." The character's flaw must result from something that is also a central part of their virtue, which goes somewhat awry, usually due to a lack of knowledge. By defining the notion this way, Aristotle indicates that a truly tragic hero must have a failing that is neither idiosyncratic nor arbitrary, but is somehow more deeply imbedded -- a kind of human failing and human weakness. Oedipus fits this precisely, for his basic flaw is his lack of knowledge about his own identity. Moreover, no amount of foresight or preemptive action could remedy Oedipus' hamartia; unlike other tragic heroes, Oedipus bears no responsibility for his flaw. The audience fears for Oedipus because nothing he does can change the tragedy's outcome.

Thus, while the concept of hamartia as an exclusively moral or personal failing is foreign to Greek tragedy, the connotation is not entirely absent.

Nevertheless, to import the notion of Hamartia as "tragic flaw" into the act of doing literary analysis locks the critic into a kind of endless blame game, an attitude of superiority, and a process of speculation about what the character could or (worse) should have done differently. Tragedy often works precisely because the protagonist in choosing good, chooses something that will lead to unhappiness. This is certainly the case with Oedipus and, arguably, the case with Hamlet.

Criticism (WMP)
Scribe's influence on theater, according to Marvin J. Carlson, "cannot be overestimated". Unlike other influential theater thinkers both preceding and following Scribe, such as Victor Hugo, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw, Carlson observes that Scribe did not pen prefaces or manifestos declaiming his ideas. Scribe influenced theater, instead, with diligent craftsmanship. He honed a dramatic form into a mold so definitive, that it could be applied not only to varied content, but to varied content from a variety of playwrights. Carlson identifies a single instance of critical commentary from Scribe. In 1836 Scribe gave a speech to the Académie Française during which he expressed his view of the central idea of what draws the audiences to theater as the following:

"not for instruction or improvement, but for diversion and distraction, and that which diverts them [audience] most is not truth, but fiction. To see again what you have before your eyes daily will not please you, but that which is not available to you in every day life - the extraordinary and the romantic."

Nine years earlier, in 1927, Victor Hugo articulated a desire for a new type of theater that made use of the grotesque aspects of Nature to juxtapose against her beauty. If artists embraced the concept of inherent oppositional binaries such as ugliness within beautiful, Hugo posited, art would be able to shed light a higher, more real, Truth. In an effort to depart from the rigid external form of Neo-Classicism, "God preserve us from our systems!" , Hugo expressed an artistic movement that spun the compass towards valuing transformative content over the art of formal rules. The break from Neo-Classic structure cleared the path for Scribe's new formula that would serve future generations of dramatists, resulting in Carlson's high marks.

Criticisms
Concepts from Aristotle's Poetics have been used for centuries to enhance dramatic works. There is, however, no consensus about what constitutes a proper use of hamartia. According to R. D. Dawe, "In particular hamartia appears inaccurate when measured against the events in Oedipus Rex, a play which is clearly in the forefront of Aristotle's mind throughout the Poetics, and which he mentions by name in the present context". (Dawe 90) He continues to say readers have a choice "either hamartia in Aristotle's discussion has a meaning unknown from any of its other very frequent occurrences in Greek Literature (including Aristotle himself) and Aristotle has not seen fit to add a word to of clarification to his casual introduction of this novel concept: or else his words have almost no relevance in Greek as it was actually practiced..." (Dawe 91). Lastly, Dawe points out that Aristotle spends much less time on hamartia than he does peripetia or anagnorisis; thus it's "incorrect to speak of hamartia as a doctrine" (Dawe 90).

J. M. Bremer, who published "Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy" in the American Journal of Philology, is satisfied with the meaning "error" but thinks its wrong to believe "that there is any notion of fault or moral defect involved in hamartia" (Bremer 711). He suspects "that the meaning of hamartia is one of those problems which become the more insoluble the more fully they are examined" (Bremer 711) and adds that the meaning is very skeptical (Bremer 711). The more research done and the more input added on hamartia, the less a finite definition is found, which is partly why Bremer explains hamartia's problem is "insoluble".

Dawe and Bremer agree on the fact that the definition of hamartia can and does differ from reader to reader, thus adding significance to Dawe's comment of it not being comparable to Aristotle's more definite terms of peripetia and anagnorisis.


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