Tragedy
While performing in Sweden with her stepfather's circus, she met a Swedish cavalry officer, Lieutenant Count Bengt Edvard Sixten Sparre (27 September 1854 – 20 July 1889). Sparre and Madigan fell in love, but their love was impossible, partly due to the fact that Sparre was married and the father of two children. After exchanging love letters for a year, they ran away together to Denmark in June 1889, where they spent about a month. When they ran out of money, they packed a picnic basket, went out to the Nørreskov ("North forest") on the island Tåsinge, Denmark, and had a last meal, after which Sparre shot Madigan and himself with his service revolver. Madigan was 21 years old and Sparre 35 years old.
Madigan's and Sparre's grave is situated on the cemetery of Landet on Tåsinge and is still today visited by tourists and lovers from all over the world. Their tragic love story has some resemblance to the Austrian Mayerling drama, where Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his lover took their lives in January 1889.
Read more about this topic: Elvira Madigan
Famous quotes containing the word tragedy:
“A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude.... A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The Taylor and the Painter often contribute to the Success of a Tragedy more than the Poet. Scenes affect ordinary Minds as much as Speeches; and our Actors are very sensible, that a well-dressed Play has sometimes brought them as full Audiences, as a well-written one.... But however the Show and Outside of the Tragedy may work upon the Vulgar, the more understanding Part of the Audience immediately see through it, and despise it.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)