Elements of the Shakespearean Tragedy

Tragic Hero: a person of high rank whose fate affects the destiny of his country, city, or family.

The hero is always an extraordinary and admirable man. He is usually good and noble, but when evil, he has equal traits such as strength, courage or ambition.

Shakespearean Tragedy

The hero has a character flaw, which, with the help of other circumstances, leads the hero to calamity and death—a contrast to the hero’s prior happiness and glory.

A dual conflict generates the play’s action. There is an external conflict (war) and an internal conflict (Macbeth’s ambition and later his guilty conscience).

Shakespearean Tragedy

Good always triumphs in the end. Although the hero has pulled down the world around him, there is someone who restores order at the end of the tragedy.

Tragedies contain the supernatural, such as witches and ghosts.

Tragedies contain characters who experience abnormal psychological states, such as Macbeth’s visions.