Tag Archives: tragedy

Shakespeare’s plays, organized.

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One remarkable thing about Shakespeare’s plays is how varied they are. There are comedies and tragedies; histories of England, and of Rome, musings on religion, and on drink, and lots of cross-dressing. He wrote at least thirty seven plays between 1590 and 1613, alone or as a major collaborator, and the chart below gives a sense of the scope. I have seen less than half of these plays, so I find the chart below both useful and humorous. The humor of the chart is partly that it presents the common man (us) access to the godly (Shakespeare). That access is the root of the best comedy, in my opinion. Shakespeare also has a comic dog, some total idiots, comic violence to women, and a few other cringeworthy laugh-getters, but we’ll not mention those; it’s low comedy. You’ll notice that Merchant of Venice is listed here as a comedy; I think it was seen that way by Shakespeare. The hero of the play in my opinion, is a woman, Portia, who outsmarts all others by her legal genius at the end. Tragedy is when the great individual can not access great things. At least that’s how I see it. As for History; it’s been said, that it starts as tragedy, and ends as comedy. Shakespeare’s histories include some of each. And as for our, US history, Lincoln was tragedy, like LBJ; Truman was comedy, and Andrew Jackson too. And, as for Trump, who knows?

By Myra Gosling, www.goodticklebrain.com
A Shakespeare collaboration. The collaborator, Fletcher, is cited by name.

Ms Gosling’s graphic, wonderful as it is, lists some but not all of Shakespeare’s collaborations. Two listed ones, “Henry VIII,” and “The Two Noble Kinsmen” were with John Fletcher. The cover shown at right, shows Fletcher named as first author. Since Fletcher outlived Shakespeare and took over the company after his death, I’ll assume these are later plays.

“Henry IV, part 1” is thought to be from Shakespeare’s early career, and seems to have been a mass collaboration: something written by a team the way situation comedies are written today. And “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” listed near the bottom right, seems to have been a mid-career collaboration with George Wilkins. At least four of Shakespeare’s collaborations don’t appear at all in the graphic. “Edward III” and “The Spanish Tragedy”, appear to have been written with Thomas Kyd, likely early in Shakespeare’s career. Perhaps Gosling felt they don’t represent the real Shakespeare, or perhaps she left them off because they are not performed often. Another collaboration, “Sir Thomas More” (an intentional misspelling of Moore?), is well regarded today, and still put on. An existing manuscript includes 300+ lines written in Shakespeare’s hand. Still, Shakespeare’s main contribution seems to have been editing the play to get it past the censors. Finally, “Cardenio,” is a lost play, likely another collaboration with Fletcher. It got good reviews.

The cool thing about Shakespeare’s play writing, in my opinion, is his willingness to let the characters speak for themselves. Even characters who Shakespeare doesn’t like have their say. They speak with passion and clarity; without interruption or mockery. Writing this way is difficult, and most writers can’t avoid putting themselves and their opinions in the forefront. I applaud Ms Gosling for making Shakespeare accessible. Here’s this month’s issue of her blog, GoodTickleBrain.

Robert Buxbaum, June 26, 2019. As a side note, Shakespeare appears to have been born and died on the same date, April 23; in 1564 and 1616, respectively.

Marie de Condorcet and the tragedy of the GOP

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This is not Maire de Condorcet, it's his wife Sophie. Marie (less attractive) was executed by Robespierre for being a Republican.

Marie Jean is a man’s name. This is not he, but his wife, Sophie de Condorcet. Marie Jean was executed for being a Republican in Revolutionary France.

During the French Revolution, Marie Jean de Condorcet proposed a paradox with significant consequence for all elective democracies: It was far from clear, de Condorcet noted, that an election would choose the desired individual — the people’s choice — once three or more people could run. I’m sorry to say, this has played out often over the last century, usually to the detriment of the GOP, the US Republican party presidential choices.

The classic example of Condorcet’s paradox occurred in 1914. Two Republican candidates, William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, faced off against a less-popular Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. Despite the electorate preferring either Republican to Wilson, the two Republicans split the GOP vote, and Wilson became president. It’s a tragedy, not because Wilson was a bad president, he wasn’t, but because the result was against the will of the people and entirely predictable given who was running (see my essay on tragedy and comedy).

The paradox appeared next fifty years later, in 1964. President, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) was highly unpopular. The war in Vietnam was going poorly and our cities were in turmoil. Polls showed that Americans preferred any of several moderate Republicans over LBJ: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., George Romney, and Nelson Rockefeller. But no moderate could beat the others, and the GOP nominated its hard liner, Barry Goldwater. Barry was handily defeated by LBJ.

Then, in 1976; as before the incumbent, Gerald Ford, was disliked. Polls showed that Americans preferred Democrat Jimmy Carter over Ford, but preferred Ronald Regan over either. But Ford beat Reagan in the Republican primary, and the November election was as predictable as it was undesirable.

Voters prefer Bush to Clinton, and Clinton to Trump, but Republicans prefer Trump to Bush.

Voters prefer Bush to Clinton, and Clinton to Trump, but Republicans prefer Trump to Bush.

And now, in 2015, the GOP has Donald Trump as its leading candidate. Polls show that Trump would lose to Democrat Hillary Clinton in a 2 person election, but that America would elect any of several Republicans over Trump or Clinton. As before,  unless someone blinks, the GOP will pick Trump as their champion, and Trump will lose to Clinton in November.

At this point you might suppose that Condorcet’s paradox is only a problem when there are primaries. Sorry to say, this is not so. The problem shows up in all versions of elections, and in all versions of decision-making. Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that these unwelcome, undemocratic outcomes are unavoidable as long as there are more than two choices and you can’t pick “all of the above.” It’s one of the first great applications of high-level math to economics, and Arrow got the Nobel prize for it in 1972. A mathematical truth: elective democracy can never be structured to deliver the will of the people.

This problem also shows up in business situations, e.g. when a board of directors must choose a new location and there are 3 or more options, or when a board must choose to fund a few research projects out of many. As with presidential elections, the outcome always depends on the structure of the choice. It seems to me that some voting systems must be better than others — more immune to these problems, but I don’t know which is best, nor which are better than which. A thought I’ve had (that might be wrong) is that reelections and term limits help remove de Condorcet’s paradox by opening up the possibility of choosing “all of the above” over time. As a result, many applications of de Condorcet’s are wrong, I suspect. Terms and term-limits create a sort of rotating presidency, and that, within limits, seems to be a good thing.

Robert Buxbaum, September 20, 2015. I’ve analyzed the Iran deal, marriage vs a PhD, and (most importantly) mustaches in politics; Taft was the last of the mustached presidents. Roosevelt, the second to last.

Comedy: what is comedy?

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It’s a mistake, I think, to expect that comedy will be funny; the Devine comedy isn’t, nor are Shakespeare’s comedies. It seems, rather, that comedy is the result of mistakes, fakes, and drunks stumbling along to a (typically) unexpected outcome. That’s sometimes funny, as often not. Our expectation is that mistakes and fools will fail in whatever the try, but that’s hardly ever the outcome in literature. Or in life. As often as not, the idiot ends up as king with the intelligent man working for him. It’s as if God is a comic writer and we are his creation. Perhaps God keeps us around for our amusement value, and drops us when we get stale.

It’s not uncommon to have laughs in a comedy; a Shakespearian comedy has some, as does life. But my sense is that you find more jokes in a tragedy, e.g. Romeo and Juliet, or Julius Caesar. What makes these tragedies, as best I can tell, is the great number of honorable people behaving honorably. Unlike what Aristotle claims, tragedy doesn’t have to deal with particularly great people (Romeo and Juliet aren’t) but they must behave honorably. If Romeo were to say “Oh well, she’s dead, I’ll find another,” it would be a comedy. When the lovers choose honorable death over separation, that’s tragedy.

hell viewed as a layer cake. Here is where suicides end up.

Dante’s hell viewed as a layer cake. The “you” label is where suicides end up; it’s from an anti-suicide blog.

Fortunately for us, in real life most people behave dishonorably most of the time, and the result is usually a happy ending. In literature and plays too, dishonorable behavior usually leads to a happy ending. In literature, I think it’s important for the happy ending to come about semi-naturally with some foreshadowing. God may protect fools, but He keeps to certain patterns, and I think a good comic writer should too. In one of my favorite musicals, the Music Man, the main character, a lovable con man is selling his non-teaching of music in an Iowa town. In the end, he escapes prison because, while the kids can’t play at all, the parents think they sound great. It’s one of the great Ah hah moments, I think. Similarly at the end of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, it’s not really surprising that the king (Mikado) commutes the death sentence of his son’s friends on the thinnest of presence: he’s the king; those are his son’s friends, and one of them has married a horrible lady who’s been a thorn in the king’s side. Of course he commutes the sentence: he’s got no honor. And everyone lives happily.

Even in the Divine Comedy (Dante), the happy ending (salvation) comes about with a degree of foreshadowing. While you meet a lot of suffering fools in hell and purgatory, it’s not totally unexpected to find some fools and sinners in heaven too. Despite the statement at the entrance of hell, “give up all hope”, you expect and find there is Devine grace. It shows up in a sudden break-out from hell, where a horde of the damned are seen to fly past those in purgatory for being too pious. And you even find foolish sinning at the highest levels of heaven. The (prepared) happy ending is what makes it a good comedy, I imagine.

There is such a thing as a bad comedy, or a tragic-comedy. I suspect that “The merchant of Venice” is not a tragedy at all, but a poorly written, bad comedy. There are fools aplenty in merchant, but too many honorable folks as well. And the happy ending is too improbable: The disguised woman lawyer wins the case. The Jew loses his money and converts, everyone marries, and the missing ships reappear, as if by magic. A tragic-comedy, like Dr Horrible’s sing along blog; is something else. There are fools and mistakes, but not totally unexpected ending is unhappy. It happens in life too, but I prefer it when God writes it otherwise.

It seems to me that the battle of Bunker Hill was one of God’s comedies, or tragic-comedies depending on which side you look. Drunken Colonials build a bad fort on the wrong hill in the middle of the night. Four top British generals agree to attack the worthless fort with their best troops just to show them, and the result is the greatest British loss of life of the Revolutionary war — plus the British in charge of the worthless spit of land. It’s comic, despite the loss of life, and despite that these are not inferior people. There is a happy ending from the American perspective, but none from the British.

I can also imagine happy tragedies: tales where honorable people battle and produce a happy result. It happens rarely in life, and the only literature example I can think of is  1776 (the musical). You see the cream of the colonies, singing, dancing, and battling with each other with honorable commitment. And the result is a happy one, at least from the American perspective.

Robert E. Buxbaum, September 17-24, 2015. I borrowed some ideas here from Nietzsche: Human, All too Human, and Birth of Tragedy, and added some ideas of my own, e.g. re; God. Nietzsche is quite good on the arts, I find, but anti-good on moral issues (That’s my own, little Nietzsche joke, and my general sense). The original Nietzsche is rather hard to read, including insights like: “A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”