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Discuss some of the difficulties in distinguishing tragedy from melodrama with reference to Thomas Kydd's Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Macbeth

What is melodrama?

In order to understand the difficulties in distinguishing tragedy from melodrama with reference to these two plays, it is first necessary to come to an accepted definition of what these terms mean in dramatic theory. The etymology of the word ‘melodrama’, is from the Greek melos meaning song, or music, and drama, meaning an action, deed or play. This etymology points to the origins of the dramatic form in Ancient Greece, where a plain spoken text would commonly be performed with musical accompaniment. In its broadest sense, the term refers to a serious drama that can be distinguished from tragedy by having a happy ending, and from comedy by still retaining ‘tragic’, that is, unfortunate events. The term as currently understood in modern usage has a wider reference, where it commonly has a pejorative meaning, and refers to types of drama which are overblown, overacted, sentimental or characterised by improbable coincidences. These characteristics may show themselves in a stage-world which is overly emotional; contains stock characters such as a hero who rights the upsetting of the balance of good and evil in a morally-ordered universe; and a villain poses who a threat which the hero eventually overcomes.

What is tragedy?

The etymology of the word ‘tragedy’ is often thought to be from tragedos, meaning goat, and odos, meaning song. This indicates the ritualistic and sacrificial origins of tragedy in Ancient Greece, where dithyrambs were spoken, with a choral and musical accompaniment, in honour of the ecstatic god Dionysus. There would have been little to distinguish ‘tragedy’ from ‘melodrama’ in 5th century Athens, since it was the nature of any dramatic form to contain musical accompaniment. The term ‘tragedy’ therefore had a specific reference when used in Ancient Greek society, namely to a type of drama that honoured the god Dionysus. However, it was also characterised by its content. Tragedy as understood today refers primarily to a drama which has an unhappy ending, and is concerned with a hero who suffers some form of downfall in a seemingly amoral and uncaring universe.

Kyd and Shakespeare

A flourishing of the tragic form is to be found took in the English Theatre of the Renaissance, of which Tragedians Shakespeare is the most famous, though he is not alone in his achievement; Thomas Kyd, believed by many to be the author of an earlier Ur-Hamlet, used by Shakespeare when writing his own play, lived from1558-94. His most famed work is The Spanish Tragedy, which although contains melodramatic elements, is also credited with initiating an important (and influential upon Shakespeare) Renaissance genre, namely, the revenge tragedy.

The Spanish Tragedy and Macbeth

The Spanish Tragedy has had a reputation for being ‘melodramatic’ (in the pejorative sense); a judgement made based mainly on its frequent, and bloody, on-stage deaths of many of the characters. For example, only the King of Spain and the Viceroy of Portugal are left at the end of the play, 5.5.231ff, to mourn the deaths of Don Cyprian and Balthazar respectively. The Spanish Tragedy has also been criticised for being ‘overblown’, in terms of its rhetorical bombast, notably at the beginning of the play, in the speech between the ghost of Andrea and Revenge, at 1.1.1-91. These two characters frame the play, and comment on the action at the end of each scene. They also carry out the important function of foretelling the entire action of the play, and thus set the action within a pre-ordained universe; the events of which it is not possible to alter. Therefore there is a crushing finality to the pronouncements from the underworld about the violent course of action to come. As we could expect from a play which initiated the genre of revenge tragedy, this is in common with the genre of revenge tragedy as a whole, which is itself characterised by an excess of violence, and a foretelling of future events by the ghost of an unjustly killed character, whose death is to provide the on-running theme of revenge which drives the entire plot.
Macbeth is not usually characterised as a revenge tragedy, still less as melodrama, being more often considered a tragedy motivated by the deeds of the (anti) hero, rather than by revenge. Similar to The Spanish Tragedy, the action of Macbeth is set within a pre-ordained universe, in which the actions of the course of events are decided for the characters. We learn, at 1.3.48ff that Macbeth is to be both Thane of Cawdor and King; this immutable fact serves to drive forward Macbeth’s subsequent ambitions, and thus the tragedy of the play, initiated by Macbeth’s first act of evil: the (off-stage) killing of Duncan, the King of Scotland. While Macbeth does not quite match the excess of on-stage violence that we find in The Spanish Tragedy (and which is attributed a characteristic of melodrama), the events of Macbeth could still be termed ‘melodrama’. One often noted feature of the play is its tightness. The action unfolds at near break-neck speed, from which consequence neatly follows on tragic consequence. Coupled with this, there is a sense that time is telescoped in the play; for example, at 1.5.20-23, Lady Macbeth seems to collapse together the tenses of the verb ‘to do’, and this is not the only instance of rapidity, which in the context of tragic drama, serves as the driving force behind the play entire. However, this is easily parodied as melodrama; if the pace is too fast, the consequences follow on too neatly, then tragedy easily descends into melodramatic burlesque. That this is possible is demonstrable in the form of William Davenant and Francis Talfourd’s comic adaptation of Macbeth. In this adaptation, which honours its source by striking right at the heart of the play (in parodying its clock-work like rhythm of cause and effect) the events of the play are turned on their heads; thus, Duncan returns from the dead after Macbeth’s death in order to reclaim his crown, which he does successfully. This leads Macbeth also to resurrect himself, whereupon he hands over his regal station, apparently deciding that it’s just not worth being a Thane. This comic turn of events plays havoc with the tightly linear structure of the play, and presents it rather as circular; we are back to where we started, with Duncan back as king of Scotland.
In conclusion we find that genre-definitions such as ‘melodrama’ and ‘tragedy’ are often difficult to pin down firmly onto any single play. Perhaps it is better, and more helpful for the literary critic, to think in terms of tragic and melodramatic features, and to look for these separate instances in plays instead.

Bibliography:

Shakespeare, W., Macbeth: The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare (ed.) K.Muir (Methuen: London and New York, 1984)

Shakespeare, W., Macbeth: A Norton Critical Edition (ed.) R.S.Miola (London: W.W.Norton & Company, 2004)

Kyd, T., The Spanish Tragedy with Anonymous The First Part of Jeronimo (ed.) E.Smith (London: Penguin, 1998)

Erne, L., Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd: The Revels Plays Companion Library (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001)

Freeman, A., Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967)

Davenant, W., Macbeth: A Tragedy with all the Alterations, Amendments, Additions, and New Songs (London, 1674)

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