Editing Tragedy (section)

===Britain===
[[File:Edwin Austin Abbey King Lear, Act I, Scene I The Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|thumbnail|[[Edwin Austin Abbey]] (1852–1911) ''[[King Lear]]'', Cordelia's Farewell ]]
{{see also|English Renaissance theatre|Heroic drama|Shakespearean tragedy|Revenge play}}
{{Reformationliterature |expanded=british}}British tragedy, particularly in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, diverged from classical models in both form and theme.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Blevins |first=Jacob |date=2004 |title=Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries by Jonathan Dollimore |url=https://doi.org/10.1353/itx.2004.0008 |journal=Intertexts |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=201–203 |doi=10.1353/itx.2004.0008 |issn=2156-5465}}</ref> While influenced by Senecan drama, British tragedies frequently defied the unities of time, place, and action, favoring a more flexible dramatic structure.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bushnell |first=Rebecca Weld |url=https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501745577 |title=Tragedies of Tyrants |date=2019-12-31 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-4557-7 |location=Ithaca, NY}}</ref> This allowed for a deeper exploration of psychological complexity, political instability, and moral ambiguity.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kasten |first=David Scott |date=1982 |title=Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time |journal=Macmillan}}</ref>

Rather than adhering to neoclassical ideals, British tragedies frequently blended high and low characters and adopted tragicomic tones, contributing to the development of a distinct national tradition.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kermode |first=Frank |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195136128.001.0001 |title=The Sense of an Ending |date=2000-04-06 |publisher=Oxford University PressNew York, NY |isbn=978-0-19-513612-8}}</ref> The chaotic structure and social hybridity of many of these plays mirrored the turbulent political and religious transformations of the time.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Greenblatt |first=Stephen |url=https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226027043.001.0001 |title=Renaissance Self-Fashioning |date=2005 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-30659-9}}</ref>[[File:Romeo and juliet brown.jpg|thumb|''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'', the classic tragedy by English playwright [[William Shakespeare]]]]
The common forms are the:
* ''Tragedy of circumstance'': people are born into their situations, and do not choose them; such tragedies explore the consequences of birthrights, particularly but not always for monarchs. (This particular variant of tragedy was the genre's first shift away from stories about characters suffering due to their own faults, but rather due to circumstances out of their control.)
* ''Tragedy of miscalculation'': the [[protagonist]]'s error of judgement has tragic consequences
* ''[[Revenge play]]''
In English, the most famous and most successful tragedies are those of [[William Shakespeare]] and his [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]] contemporaries. Shakespeare's tragedies include:
* ''[[Antony and Cleopatra]]''
* ''[[Coriolanus]]''
* ''[[Hamlet]]''
* ''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]''
* ''[[King Lear]]''
* ''[[Macbeth]]''
* ''[[Othello]]''
* ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]''
* ''[[Timon of Athens]]''
* ''[[Titus Andronicus]]''
* ''[[Troilus and Cressida]]''
William Shakespeare expanded the tragedy genre further by integrating elements of comedy, history, and philosophy into his tragedies.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Clifford |first=Catherine |date=2017-12-16 |title=Dutton, Shakespeare, Court Dramatist (Oxford University Press, 2016) |url=https://doi.org/10.21039/rsj.v4i2.171 |journal=Royal Studies Journal |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=263 |doi=10.21039/rsj.v4i2.171 |issn=2057-6730|doi-access=free }}</ref> His works such as ''King Lear'', ''Hamlet,'' and ''Macbeth'' are noted for their interiority use of soliloquy, and exploration of fate, madness and human agency.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Burke |first=John J. |last2=Bloom |first2=Harold |date=1999 |title=Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/3201503 |journal=South Atlantic Review |volume=64 |issue=4 |pages=115 |doi=10.2307/3201503 |issn=0277-335X}}</ref>

A contemporary of Shakespeare, [[Christopher Marlowe]], also wrote examples of tragedy in English, notably:
* ''[[The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus]]''
* ''[[Tamburlaine (play)|Tamburlaine the Great]]''
Christopher Marlowe's ''Doctor Faustus'' merges medieval morality traditions with Renaissance humanism, portraying a tragic protagonist who seeks knowledge and power at the expense of salvation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Johnson |first=Christopher D. |date=2010 |title=Patrick G. Cheney. Marlowe's Republican Authorship: Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime. Early Modern Literature in History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. xiii + 248 pp. index. bibl. $75. ISBN: 978–1–4039–3341–6. |url=https://doi.org/10.1086/652624 |journal=Renaissance Quarterly |volume=63 |issue=1 |pages=318–319 |doi=10.1086/652624 |issn=0034-4338}}</ref>

[[John Webster]] (1580?–1635?), also wrote famous plays of the genre:
* ''[[The Duchess of Malfi]]''
* ''[[The White Devil]]''