Tragedy in the theatre is the sad story of a central protagonist, who, either deliberately or by accident, offends against the most fundamental laws of his society, those laws which are so basic as to be considered divine.

Eva Figes uses this definition of tragedy in her book Tragedy and Social Evolution, where she takes a new approach to the much-vexed problems of the nature of tragic drama and of the relationship between such cultural phenomena and the society which produced them. Working on the basic assumption that specific historical and social conditions give rise to certain forms of artistic production, Ms. Figes looks at the way in which tragedy, in the past, has functioned as a ritual process through which societies ceremonially reaffirm their apparently universal values. In the times of the Greek tragedians and of Shakespeare, deeply-rooted beliefs about the hierarchy and order of society—for...