WHAT IS TRAGEDY?

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 860, 5 July 1910, Page 6

WHAT IS TRAGEDY?

MAN AND FATE. THE FORTUNES OF A WORD. (BiJ.Q.X.) . "Look that thine heart bo merry everfmore." It' is the advice of Chaucer's Host, and it has so long been my own advice to myself and others that I shall Dot now gainsay it. Ever since .1 began to . read newspapers, it has been my practice to skip all cablegrams, articles and reports with such headings as "Domestic Tragedy," "Tragedy in the Bush," "Tragedy in High Life," and the-like. ■ They <lo not keep the • heart merry.' I have, moreover • a long-standing quarrel with tho headlines themselves, and now,- at last, I am determined, with • whatever Joss of mirth; to "hare it out." That word "tragedy," as describing the bare fact of a shedding of blood, or swallowing of poison, seems to me not. well apjplie<l. I admit that respectable dictionaries seem to countenance its use in such connections, and my complaint, therefore, is not that the use is wrong, but that it tends to degrade a noble word by keeping it meanly employed. "Tragedy" is believed to be derived from Greek "tragos," a goat, and I understand that scholars are not satisfied ;with any of their guesses as to how iso fctrange a derivation is to be accounted ttor. We must be content for the present to see in it an example of the great changes that are constantly taking place in the meanings of words. We cannot prevent such changes. All that we can do for a word that has fallen on evil days is to acknowledge its inheritance of great estate. If such acknowledgment 5s general, tho estate may. be preserved to it. There appears to be the more ground for such hope in the case of the .word tragedy when it is realised that after rising from its ancient small-holding of forgotten goat pasturage to its great domain in classic Greece, it suffered much Joss during the Middlo Agos, but. in due Jtime its goodly heritage was restored and ,*enlarged by tho regal power of ShakesJxare. Its position is now comparable to that of certain peers of tho British realm jrho keep greengrocers' shops or sell coals. They retain their titles and estates, and Wn use them in their businesses. They havo a perfect right to do so, and I confess to being more concerned about this irord's fortunes than about theirs. If it must still keep its shop and coalyard in the columns of the press, let us at. least not forget its far-spread fields and its mountain crags. ' The medieval conception.- of tragedy is sccurately defined by the Monk in tho "Canterbury Tales"— ■"Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, As, olde bookes maken us memorie, Of hvrn that stood in greet prosperitee, lAnd is y-fallen out of heigh degree •Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly." And so the Monk, from his recollections of Boccaccio and with a few examples from tho Bible, told tale after tale of the fall of the mighty until the Knight cried, "No more," and tho Host spoko up for a merry heart. Greek tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy are much greater things than the tales with which the Monk bored the Canterbury pilgrims. The ruin of the great is indeed their theme, but with what vast addition of skyward-reaching, worldembracing thought. Tragedy, in this great and true sense, transcends alike the ■trite moralisings of tho Chaucerian monk and the virtne-triumphant-and-vice-confounded "happy ending" of, tho stereotyped melodrama. It presents sincerity, without, •any intentional''exaggeration on one''side" or glossing over on the other, the hardiness of fate, the many martyrdoms of (life,- the defeats of strong souls. It jtolls us not in words, hut in iword-pic-.Tures. the bitter _ truth of the seeming injustice of life. ' Its heroes arc the i "Lonely antagonists of Destiny, That went down scornful before many : spears, Who, soon as we are born, are straight our friends." 'Sometimes Destiny takes the form of (some twist of character, as in Shakespeare's Richard 111, or some weakness, as in Hamlet, and sometimes it masquerades as tyrant circumstance, but whether it works from within or from •around, or from above, it is always the unseen protagonist. Tragedy sober?, but when truly -written and rightly read, it does not depress. It strengthens and purifies. It banishes little worries and selfish cares. The clearer fits _ portraiture of unavailing struggle against Fate, the more insistent is its suggestion—but still only suggestion—of b justice enclosing the seeming injustice. Even in its darkest shadows, it. carries no infection of pessimism, for it forbids us to think meanly of human kind. Theso that dare to strive against such overmastering powers must be something better than , worms. If the gods plague, it cannot be said that thev take no notice. The great tragedies end hopefully. The hero is overborne, but that may be well. | "Vex not his ghost: 0, let him pass!. I' he hates him ' That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer." lAnd after him, the world ys to go on. £Lear dies, but Kent and Edgar will rule. Houieo and Juliet perish, but Montague and Capulet join hands. Hamlet shares his uncle's fate, but Denmark may thrive bettor under Fortinbras. And—to take a modern instance, which I hold worthy to lie placed with these.when the black flag had moved up tho staff on Wintoncester Gaol and extended itself upon the breeze to tell that " 'justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess," the two who watched it, after remaining a long time . . to earth, as if in prayer, "arose, joined • hands again, and went on." I lie great tragedies have much in comf 1 ! 1 ? evpnt i v l hich is the centre ol the Christian faith. The world is the better for tliem. Their great defeated ones, even if they existed only in men's minds, aro our friends.