Senecan tragedy: The Roman playwright Seneca lived in the 1st century A.D. He wrote nine tragedies focusing on bloody incidents and employing ghosts and magic (rather than the gods of the Greek playwrights he followed). Highly organized, his plays observe the classical unities--that is, the events take place within a few hours and occur in a single location--in five acts. The plays are filled with moralizing and instructive passages.
Revenge tragedy: Revenge plays are the horror movies of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama (1580-1625), derived in part from Senecan drama. A revenge play shows a person who has been wronged but cannot find justice within the established system of law enforcement. A revenge play shows an evil avenged--and often the revenger himself paying with injury or his life--in a series of bloody and horrible deeds, typically featuring
1. Take one or more of the characteristics that are standard and explain how you find it dramatically effective or ineffective for today's audience in a production of Hamlet.
2. Many popular movies (especially Clint Eastwood movies) fit the basic definition of "revenge tragedy." You are making a film of Hamlet in a modern setting, and your producer urges you to leave out the Ghost, something he feels modern audiences would not accept. (Instead, Hamlet would find a badly produced videotape of the murder under mysterious circumstances.) Explain why you will accept or reject this suggestion based on its effect on the play--for example on plot, atmosphere and characterization.
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