Tragedy
Abstract
632 | gregory currie GREGORY CURRIE 1. The problem We demand our money back if a rogue theatre director has Desdemona alive at the end of Othello â not merely because it contradicts Shakespeareâs intentions, but because it seems dramatically wrong. At the same time, and for the same people, her death is deeply upsetting. While we want the fiction to go a certain way, and certainly to include the death of Desdemona, we donât, it seems, want Desdemona to die. We are, as Hume said, âpleased in proportion as [we] are afflictedâ (1777/1985: 217). Put generally: (1) while (2) we react in ways which make it tempting to say that we want E not to occur. we want the fiction to be such that something, E, occurs in it, Iâll call such a combination of states a tragic response, and the fiction to which it is a response tragic or a tragedy. But my (2) invites the question: Is the tempting thing to say the right thing? My answer is No. So I have to find a better answer. This is my problem of tragedy. It is not Humeâs problem. Hume wondered why people seek tragic fictions;