For Friday: Poole, Tragedy, Chapter 7: "Words, words, words"

This is the last reading for a week, so enjoy! Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Poole references the famous scene in Macbeth (4.3) when the Messenger tells Macduff about the death of his wife and children. He notes that "This is an important and recurring scene in tragedy. Something terrible happens off-stage, and a messenger must bring the bad news to the nearest and dearest" (86). Why do you think this is such a popular and effective stock scene? Why does Shakespeare use it over and over again in his own plays? 

Q2: What role do silence and wordless sounds play in tragedy? Why does Shakespeare employ so many exclamations and empty words such as "alas," "alack" and the infamous "O!"? Might this also explain why Brutus merely whispers his dying request in Act 5, rather than speaking it aloud?

Q3: On the flip side of Q2, why do plays often make people speak through moments of unbearable tragedy, when in real life we would simply scream or faint? Is it melodramatic for plays to take this artistic license? In other words, is it hard to take such moments seriously/tragically? Or is there another way to experience them?

Q4: What does Poole mean when he writes, “Risk is intrinsic to all performance, but where tragedy is concerned the sense of risk is written into the text itself as something to be embodied, encountered, endured by anyone who reads, witnesses or performs it” (90)? How is the audience at risk in a performance of tragedy? What are we risking other than our confusion or boredom?