• IBSEN COURSE •
Course Syllabus
Required Reading
Week I Material
Week II Material
Week III Material
Week IV Material
Week V Material
Week VI Material
Week VII Material
Week VIII Material
Week IX Material
Week X Material
Week XI Material
Week XII Material
Week XIII Material

Romanticism to Realism
an online course by Brian Johnston

WEEK IV: Three Tragic Masterplots

A)  In the classic master plot the given scene is a true and good order of the world and of society' that has been disrupted or overthrown by an aberrant force and must be put right.. The heroic agent opposes the aberrant force and the collision brings about a devastation that, ultimately, restores the disrupted order.  Agents of disorder may act from misguided hubris like Creon in the Antigone;) or from evil motive (Richard III or Claudius in Hamlet); or, more rarely, as themselves aberrant victims of destiny (Phèdre).

The opposing heroic agent usually is highly placed in the hierarchy of the good (legitimate) order (Antigone); often wrongly displaced ( Elektra, Orestes; Hamlet) by the violator.   Through his/her integrity, by restoring order, the heroic agent recovers his/her place in the good hierarchy. Often the tragic action leads to the destruction of the agent (Hamlet). 

B)   In the Romantic/Ibsen s master plot the given scene of order is ostensibly legitimate but its hidden contradictions maintain the protagonists in 'false consciousness'.  Those who oppose and disrupt In Ibsen's plays a triggering action (often an unexpected visitor) gradually exposes the hidden contradictions to an ‘ alienated consciousness that suffers the devastation of his/her idea of the world.  The result of this dialectic is that the agent seeks a more adequate self-identity within a more adequate order of things and often is destroyed in the attempt (Don Carlos). In Ibsen the protagonist ( from any class in the social order) undergoes painful self-knowledge and can emerge.   

C)  In e.g. the Tennessee Williams' scenario, the given order of things is defective (violent; corrupt) but has become an established norm.   The triggering agent is an unhappy misfit or a vulnerable intruder (the 'fugitive kind').  This sympathetically aberrant individual arouses the hostility of the given order which triumphs, and the 'aberrant' agent becomes a victim.   He or she is someone whose qualities/values are anathema to the established order of things.  The conflict destroys the agent/victim but clarifies to the theater audience tragic divisions in the social structure.

The three scenarios show a progressive displacement of the tragic agent from central Insider to victimized Outsider.

1. Displaced centre of the true social Order
2. Critical rejection of the false social Order
3. Victimization by the established social Order.