PRINCIPAL TYPES OF TRAGEDY - DOMESTIC TRAGEDY

 

    Domestic tragedy also called bourgeois tragedy, refers to a type of tragic play that rose to prominence in England during the 1720s. Touted to be the most talented tragedian of the Georgian era, the dramatist Aaron Hill’s play The Fatal Extravagance (1721) is invariably marked as signaling its formal unveiling. The jeweler turned playwright George Lillo is commonly recognized as the leading exponent of this tragic subgenre, which apparently experienced its heyday of popularity during the 1730s when his notable works The London Merchant (1731) and Fatal Curiosity (1736) were originally produced. Other instances worth noting include Charles Johnson’s Caelia or The Perjur’d Lover (1732), John Hewitt’s Fatal Falsehood (1734), Thomas Cook’s The Mournful Nuptials or Love the Cure of all Woes (1739) and Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753). Though as a distinct form of drama domestic tragedy only arose in the 18^th century, its pedigree is often retrospectively traced back to plays produced during the renaissance such as the anonymous Arden of Faversham (1592), and Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603). These plays whose plots focused on portraying the tensions generated by domestic discords, while not formally identified as representing a part of the official canon, are nevertheless viewed as vital precursors that foreshadowed the eventual emergence of domestic tragedy.    

 

    The rise of domestic tragedy exemplifies a watershed moment in the dramatic history of England in that it marks the first time ever the traditional features associated with the tragic genre were debunked on the English stage. Several factors are cited as probable catalysts in this regard, which widely range from the rise of the enlightenment in the aftermath of the renaissance, to the upsurge in influence of the protestant faith. However, the most telling by far is undoubtedly the rise of capitalism, specifically the emergence of the so called bourgeois or the middle class it triggered. English society was traditionally conceived as a dual framework comprising of two classes, the aristocracy that was made up of the nobility and landed gentry, and the commoners constituted by such professionals as farmers and sailors. The class of merchants and traders exemplifying an intermediate category remained by and large obscure, whose identity indeed existence itself was largely ignored. With the ascendancy of capitalism or market driven economy however, the business class arose not merely as a prominent but a powerful social segment to contend with. The upshot of this development was that the aura of dignity and importance earlier reserved exclusively for the nobly born or stationed, came to be extended to those of the bourgeois or the middle class. This in turn led to the misfortunes endured by personages drawn from such ranks as apprentices, migrant labourers and skilled trades people, being dramatized into catastrophic plots in the form of domestic tragedy.

 

    It is notable that following the era of their peak popularity, domestic tragedy continued to thrive for a few years until the mid-1750s when the phase of their intense development culminated. Though they continued to be written and produced till in fact the closing years of the 18^th century, no new facet as such was incorporated into their framework, and the plays themselves lacked the vitality and appeal that those of Lillo’s and Hill’s possessed. However, by the time the charm of domestic tragedy started to fade in England, their influence spread to continental Europe where they achieved telling success in particularly France and Germany, in the plays of Denis Diderot and G. E. Lessing respectively. While as a dramatic subgenre proper domestic tragedy no longer remained in vogue post the 18^th century, its impact in spirit persisted well into the modern era. This is because domestic tragedy more than any form of drama before challenged the validity of received norms, by adapting the gravity of the tragic genre into the ordinary mainstream. Some of its classical features discussed below bear out as much.

 

TOPICAL ISSUE: A domestic tragedy is centrally concerned with the misfortunes that befall an ordinary individual or household, whose eventual ruin though evokes pity does not warrant wider consequences for the society at large. What makes this apparently mundane tale interesting however is the fact that more often than not it entails a topical reference to a real life occurance or event. Domestic tragedy in fact represents the maiden attempt made on the English stage to incorporate burning issues of contemporary times into the plot, which is evident from the very beginning. For instance, The Fatal Extravagance by Aaron Hill relates the misfortunes of a household that has been bankrupted by the collapse of the South Sea stock in 1720, which happened exactly an year before its debut performance. Similarly both the noteworthy domestic tragedies of Lillo are presumably based on real life incidents, The London Merchant on a shropshire murder related in a 17^th century ballad popular at the time, and Fatal curiosity on an allegedly true crime account of filicide that took place in a village on the western coast of England. The fact that domestic tragedies reenacted events that really happened meant that the audience who witnessed them felt terribly horrified by the spectacle on the stage, which made these plays at once both appealing and appalling. This lent to domestic tragedy a certain ghastly splendor, which enabled them to succeed despite so blatantly overturning the traditional attributes of a tragedy.

 

 

BOURGEOIS VALORISATION: A signature feature of domestic tragedy, more apparent in its alternative label bourgeois tragedy, is that all its characters are derived from the middle or trading class. It must however be specified here that far from devising them as mere actors moving the plot along, domestic tragedians upheld them as epitomizing an exemplary class of honest and honourable men. In fact, it is largely thanks to domestic tragedy that honesty and honour traditionally construed as peculiarly aristocratic virtues, came to be identified as also perhaps more so, characteristic of the bourgeois class. After all, post the mid-18^th century, such virtues were in general acknowledged as best expressed in the plain but sincere speech of an everyday person as an ordinary tradesman, than the exalted outbursts of a king or a general. Domestic tragedies however did not stop with this. Over and beyond extolling the mercantile professionals depicted in them as imbued with an acute sense of personal integrity, they valorized them as obligated with the civic responsibility of ensuring the common good. This is to say, they projected them as playing a vital role in the overall context of the nation’s progress, designating their fortunes as integrally tied up with that of the country at large. Such a projection beside raising the image of the middle class socially, also served to heighten their status aesthetically as appropriate subjects for a tragedy.

 

PROSE STYLE: Dialogues in a domestic tragedy are typically composed in a style that is evidently plain and prosaic. However, as it is prevalently presumed, this is not simply because such a language naturally corresponds to the middling station of the characters involved. After all, the bourgeois class was not completely devoid of erudition that its members simply did not have what it takes to communicate in an elevated style at all. In fact, quite a few among the mercantile class were relatively well educated, and could be expected to express themselves in an exalted manner. The use of prosaic style in a domestic tragedy is actually warranted by the point that when misfortune or grief is expressed in such a medium, it tends to invoke a raw sensation of immediacy, as opposed to expressing them in an ornate style that camouflages their real nature. In otherwords, prose was preferred simply because it enabled a livelier more disenchanting representation of suffering, unlike poetry which elevated it into a form of transcendental emotion. Through the use of prose, domestic tragedians thus ultimately sought to impart an indelibly realistic impression of suffering, which was at once both actual and universal.

 

MASS IMPACT: At the turn of the 18^th century, it was an established custom on the English stage that tragedy ought to engage itself with the distress of grand or noble personages. Writers of domestic tragedy therefore found themselves faced with the necessity of having to come up with a convincing argument to justify their plays as tragic in scope, though they essentially dealt with the misfortunes of the ordinary trading class. The situation thus demanded of them to think out of the box, which is what they did by shifting the basis for evaluating the integrity of a tragedy from the nature of the personages involved to the extent of its influence. This is to say, they defended their improvisation on the grounds that domestic tragedies via relating the saga of actual or average people, appealed to a wider scale of humanity both within the theatre and beyond. This logic of mass impact invoked by the proponents of domestic tragedy to justify the tragic character of their plays, has indeed proved enduring. The fact that people no longer expect a play to deal with affairs of kings and princes for it to be legitimately labelled as a tragedy, validates the point.