Introduction to Tragedy

In this lesson, we will learn about the origins of tragedy in ancient Greece. We will then look at how Shakespeare evolved tragedy in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

In this lesson, we will learn about how a hero can also be tragic. We will discover why all of Shakespeare's tragedies contain heroes with some fairly major psychological problems.

In our final lesson on tragedy, we will look at the structure that tragic stories follow, learn about a special pyramid invented by a German man called Freytag, and discover why most tragic heroes have only got themselves to blame.