The extent to which Schopenhauer might be considered the progenitor of modern tragedy can be found in his statement, “The only thing essential to tragedy is the portrayal of a great misfortune.” The true radicalism of his thinking comes with his assertion that this

misfortune can also be introduced simply by means of people’s positioning with respect to each other, through their relationships; so that there is no need for a terrible mistake or unheard-of accident or even for a character whose evilness extends to the limits of human possibility; instead, morally ordinary characters in everyday circumstances are positioned with respect to each other in such a way that their position forces them knowingly and clear-sightedly to cause each other the greatest harm without the injustice falling on one side or the other. This last type seems to me much preferable to the other two, because it shows us the greatest misfortune not as an exception, not as something brought about by rare circumstances or monstrous characters, but rather as something that develops effortlessly and spontaneously out of people’s deeds and characters, almost as if it were essential, thereby bringing it terrifyingly close to us. And if in both the other categories of tragedy we catch sight of an appalling fate and horrific evil as powers that are indeed terrible but that threaten us only from a great distance so that we ourselves will probably escape them without being driven to renunciation, — then this last genre shows us the sort of powers that destroy life and happiness and that can at any moment make their way towards us as well, where the greatest suffering is brought about by entanglements essentially the same as those assumed by our own fate, and through actions that we too might perhaps be capable of committing, so that we may not complain of injustice: then we shudder as we feel ourselves already in the middle of hell. [Emphasis added]

By suggesting that “morally ordinary characters in everyday circumstances” mark the highest form of tragedy in that they represent an Idea of all humanity, rather than persons of rank, privilege or riches. It comes as no surprise, then, that he has been considered a major influence on the work of Georg Büchner’s revolutionaries (in Danton’s Death), soldiers and simple townspeople (in Woyzeck), both written in the late 1830s, not long after the 1818 publication of The World as Will and Representation; Hauptmann’s The Weavers later that century; the tramps of Waiting for Godot; the middle-class family of Death of a Salesman; Sarah Kane’s reporters, soldiers and epileptics. In de-emphasizing the nobility, gods and kings of the Greek and Shakespearean tragedy for a more egalitarian cast list, Schopenhauer draws tragedy closer to the spectators in the theatre; indeed, the fact that “the greatest suffering is brought about by entanglements essentially the same as those assumed by our own fate, and through actions that we too might perhaps be capable of committing, so that we may not complain of injustice: then we shudder as we feel ourselves already in the middle of hell” suggests that neither catharsis nor poetic justice is possible. Only contemplation and knowledge of the human situation is left — no release, no gods to oversee us, whether we are great or small; it is all one whether we are royalty or refuse; tat tvam asi. This is step one towards the tragedy of our time.