Tragedy involves the downfall of an important figure, the protagonist,
             who usually becomes isolated or detached from his or her environment or
             social standing (Tragic pg). Moreover, the downfall includes others as
             well, such as his or her family or a society as a whole (Tragic pg).
             Unlike comedy, where life goes forward and inevitably has a happy ending,
             in tragedy, life may go forward, but there is never a happy ending (Tragic
             pg). Furthermore, tragic literature invariably includes pauses with
             lamentations of regret and sorrow for how life could have been different
             had there not been betrayal and deceit, whether from earthly forces or
             human forms (Tragic pg). Characters are forced to make heartbreaking
             choices, face overwhelming odds and watch fate change their lives forever
             (Tragic pg). Perhaps the two most read tragedies in literature are
             Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" from the Greek classics and William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" from the Elizabethan Era.
             In tragedies, not only are human frailties presented but human
             dignity and nobility (Tragic pg). In classic as well as Elizabethan
             dramas, disasters are not based on ordinary people, but rather noble and
             royal characters who are forced by circumstance to suffer, whether by their
             own flaws and judgment errors or by some outside force that contributes
             to the situation. Nonetheless, the characters are shown to have "enormous
             potentialities to endure or survive or transcend suffering, to learn what
             "naked wretches" feel, and to attain a complex view of moral responsibility
             (Tragic pg). "Tragic vision insists upon man's responsibility for his actions. This is the essential element of the vision that permits us to deny access to its precincts to puppets, who, by definition, have neither free will nor ultimate responsibility for their existence. Tragedy
             acknowledges the occasional disproportion between
             human acts and their ...