In his masterpiece The Poetic, Aristotle gives a clear clarification about his theory of tragedy. According to his theory, tragedy is an imitation of an action, possessing magnitude, in pleasing language, using separately the several species of imitation in its parts, by men acting, through pity and fear effecting a purification from such like passions. Aristotle claims that there are six qualities in a tragedy, among which, plots are the most essential part. Aristotle, therefore, explains what kind of plots a good tragedy should have. In short, the plots of a tragedy should be coherent (one tragedy should develop around one action), complicated (the plots should have twists and turns), and most importantly, can excite its readers fear and pity through the arts of revolution, discovery and pathos (陈颖, 2013). And this paper will mainly analyze the plots of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet from the perspective of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy.
As has been said before, plots actually are a complete action, which has a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is that which is not itself posterior to another thing while the end is something after which there is nothing else. And the middle is that which is itself after another thing, and after which there is something else. Hamlet, the whole tragedy, just contains one action, e.i. the revenge of Hamlet for his father. At the first act of Hamlet, the haunting ghost of the old king suggests his son Hamlet that he actually is murdered which is the beginning of both this tragedy and the action of revenge. Then through a lot of twists and turns, Hamlet finally completes his revenge by killing his uncle, the murderer of the old king and the new husband of his mother, which is the end of his revenge.The whole action is coherent and complete without any redundant plots.
To attract its readers, the action should be complicated, according to Aristotle. Around the action of Hamlet’s revenge, accidents happens in succession and all together advance the final realization of his revenge. At the beginning of Hamlet, the innocent and positive prince Hamlet (孙莉丽, 2019) has to face his doom of revenge because his father, the old king tells him the truth of his death. Then he doesn’t instantly conduct his revenge, instead he chooses to be mad at the meanwhile to test whether the ghost’s statement is true or not. By coincident, a group of players come to visit. Through a play directed by Hamlet, he confirms that his uncle Claudius is the murderer of his father. It is a wonderful chance for Hamlet to finish his revenge when the new king Claudius is praying for his sin, nevertheless, he stops for he thinks “when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, at gaming, swearing, or about some act that has no relish of salvation in it; Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, and that his soul may be as damned and black as hell, whereto it goes.” It can be seen form his words that Hamlet, though now understands that he has no choice but to revenge, holds mercy on the murderer. And this leads to the delay of his revenge. Then, Hamlet unintentionally kills the chamberlain Polonius, father of his girlfriend Ophelia who eavesdrops Hamlet’s conversation with his mother Gertrude behind a curtain. This leads to the exile of Hamlet and the death of Ophelia, which then leads to the revenge of Ophelia’s brother Laertes. The conflict thus moves on to the climax. At the end of the tragedy, almost all of the main characters are killed during the sword fight. These analyzed above are the main plots of the tragedy. The course of Hamlet’s revenge is long and burdensome combined with the ambivalent psychological behavior of him (张芳芳, 2017).
Apart form coherence and complex, a tragedy should excite its readers pity and fear. According to Aristotle, if each incident is unexpected while reasonable, readers’ pity and fear will be surly excited. In Hamlet, the plot of the death of Polonius is the most essential. He is killed by accident and his death makes the plots more complex because Polonius is his lover’s father. Aristotle claims that pity is excited for one who does not deserve to be unfortunate; but fear, for one who resembles oneself. Hamlet is the very person. He is a positive, innocent and learned prince of Denmark who should be the king in the future. But the death of his father changes everything——he is forced to be embroiled in the slough of politics. And the decent prince never escapes his doom of death(蓝仁哲, 2002), which surly excites its readers pity. The plots of Hamlet is actually a mini-picture of the end of the sixteenth century. Murdering the king to seize the power and to marry the king's wife are the epitome of feudalism. In the early 17th century, when Hamlet was written, the thoughts of freedom was sprouting in the British people’s mind (孙莉丽, 2019). Hamlet actually symbolizes all the awaking people at that time. They never bow to their fate but rise up to fight. However, Hamlet sacrifices at last. It means that to uphold justice we have to suffer the price of sacrifice. And this thus excites the fear of human. To excite fear and pity, according to Aristotle, another way is through the arts of revolution, discovery and pathos. Revolution is a mutation of actions into a contrary condition; and this according to the probable or the necessary. And discovery is a change from ignorance to knowledge, or into the friendship or hatred of those who are destined to prosperous or adverse fortune. And pathos is an action destructive, or lamentable. In Hamlet, there are two major revolutions, one of which is that Hamlet kills Polonius by accident. He ends an innocent person’s life, who happens to be the father of his girlfriend. Having lost his father, now Hamlet is going to lose his love. The second revolution is that Hamlet is exiled and should be murdered secretly by the followers of his uncle, but he escapes and returns to Denmark safely. These all can excite readers’ pity for him. As for discovery, one is that he finds that his uncle is the murderer of his father; another is that Claudius notices Hamlet has realized the truth and decides to send him abroad. The human nature of betrayal and blackness beneath these discoveries leads to the fear of its readers. Furthermore, there are mainly four pathos for Hamlet: the death of his father, the death of his “future father-in-law”, the betrayal of his mother and the death of his lover. All of them together push Hamlet into despair. But none of them can match his inner torture about justice and dignity, where the most touching part lies.
Tragedy is an imitation of an action and the action is shown mainly through plots. However, manners are the cause of action. It is the hesitant and upright manners of Hamlet that leads to the delay of his revenge and promote all the plots to climax.
In conclusion, Hamlet is a good example of Aristotelian tragedy. The plots of it are coherent, complicated and can excite us fear and pity through the arts of revolution, discovery and pathos. And one of the reason why Hamlet is so popular at different ages perhaps lies in its universality, for everyone can find some similarities with Hamlet so the pity and fear caused by it makes us can not help being indulged in it.
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