This essay answers the question of 'Endings to tragedies are only sad if the tragic protagonist repents, to what extent do you agree?' This achieved top band, A* marks. Thorough use of quotations, analysis, aspects and theories of tragedy.
(Q) Endings of tragedies are only sad if the protagonist repents. To what extent do you
agree?
When trying to define Richard as the protagonist, it becomes apparent that he does not
necessarily repent for his actions, there is little remorse for his wrongdoings during his Act Five
anagnorisis; however, his ending could still be ‘sad.’ Richard’s first realisations express his loss
of self and the overwhelming inevitability that defines the ‘Tragedy’ also presents a sorrowful
finality to the play.
It can be debated as to when Richard faces his anagnorisis, and perhaps its staggered delivery
from Act Four steers from the normal tragic conventions, but it is his emotive response to the
usurpation that allows for ‘sadness.’ When Bullingbrook is physically handed Richard’s, beloved
crown, is it a moment of extreme controversy, an act so brutally humiliating that is no wonder, a
cause for self-deprecation on Richard’s part. Upon looking at a cracked mirror, a metaphor itself
for his fragmented identity, he asks of his own reflection, “how soon my sorrow hath destroyed
my face?” This rhetorical personification of his own ‘sorrow’ is emphatic of the severity of his
grief - as though it had physical hands that had attacked him. Shakespeare uses lyrical and often
exaggerative language for Richard's lengthy lamentations, the hyperbole of “destroyed,” is not
immune to this: in fact, it highlights the pinnacle of Richard’s pain – and reminds us of the
destruction of his rule. “Destroyed,” implies a colossal damage to his person, Richard has not yet
separated man and King as figures that differ but struggles to understand himself without even a
“hollow” crown upon his head. Without his title, he has lost all that comes with it: ‘a thousand
men’, loyalty and even to the extent of his face (metaphorically his sense of self, individuality
and identity.) It is this loss, and Richard’s mourning for it, that makes the ending ‘sad’ for the
spectator. To an audience harboring a Queen of a forty-year reign, a King is no longer a King
once he dies not when their throne is taken right from underneath them. Therefore, the
discomfort the audience would feel with this treasonous stealing of power, regularity, and to see
the monarch in suffering consequently, insights sympathy for a ‘sad’ ending.
Whilst Richard does not repent, and his bereavement for self is saddening, another aspect to the
sorrowful end is the most ‘tragic’ convention of all – inevitability. As the protagonist to a
tragedy, Richard is cast with a hamartia, this being formidable ignorance that blinds him from
reality, and the fate that must befall him is his demise - death. Richard, immersed in his ignorant
cloud, flippantly speaks of his perish as an aggressive reaction to Bullingbrook’s growing
support, “let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings/ how some have
been deposed.” This is a rather abrupt and implosive reaction from Richard, who is merely
asking for pity in his dramatic language, whether he genuinely believes it is a narrow argument.
Richard’s intention with this exaggerative assumption is effectively, ‘poor me,’ and yet the
ominous undercurrent is that we know it will happen. The audience watching a Shakespeare
tragedy and historically, are aware that this line foreshadows Richard’s future completely. “Soon
lie Richard in an earthy pit,” and “long mayst thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,” echo that same
excruciating foreboding; this is what is most tragic about Richard’s demise. His mockery of it is
sharply ironic, his death is imminent, and in his arrogant remarks on it, leaves the audience to
question how seriously he believe his fate to be. With influence from advisers such as Carlisle
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