Evolution of tragedy

Dramas based on human suffering are called tragedies and are as old as recorded history. Some early playwrites include: aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Though the Greeks are credited with the form, it is likely that tragic tales were told around campfires and in villages globally prior to written language. In Aristotle's Poetics he offers that tragedy developed from the songs and dances used in praise of Dionysos, the god of wine and fertility.

Roman tragedies vary from the standard used by the Greeks in that there are long narrative accounts of action, heavy moralizing full of rhetoric. The gods don't appear as often as in Greek plays, but the element of the supernatural are proflific.

Shakespearian tragedies tend to have elements of both Roman and Greek tragedies, including the long soliloquies as well as the narrative accounts of action. The paranormal elements (especially Macbeth) can also be found.

Bourgeois tragedy was the next evolution of the form. It was developed in Germany and, as it title implies, furthered the goals and belief systems of the bourgeois class.

Modern tragedies are less rigid in their form. The larges change and evolution was the rejection of the idea that true tragedies should only show thos with power and high status taking a large fall. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a good example of this departure. Music was added to the modern tragedy as an extension of the operatic tragedy.