Tragicomedy

Tragicomedy is a genre of literature that combines aspects of tragedy and comedy. Works of tragicomedy use elements of both comedic bite and dramatic tragedy to create an overall effect that is neither fully sad nor lighthearted. Tragicomedies can use any assortment of comic and tragic elements. For instance, they may be either primarily comic in structure but interspersed with dark undertones, or they may chronicle an escalating series of tragic events that nonetheless conclude happily. Most often, however, the term is meant to refer to works of tragic drama that incorporate aspects of dark comedy.

Brief History

The word tragicomedy combines the words tragedy and comedy. The origins of this style of literature can be traced back to such early Greek dramatists as Euripides and Plautus. Plautus, in particular, established the term in the second century B.C.E., when he had one of his characters in the play Amphitryon describe the following drama as fitting neither the boundaries of a tragedy or comedy, but that it was rather a tragicomedy. This was, according to the narrator of the play, due to the author's unlikely depictions of gods, heroes, and slaves within the same work. However, the narrator implies that the work is merely transforming an existing tragedy into comedy to satisfy the audience's need for pleasure—a different meaning of the term than that adopted by later Renaissance dramatists.

The first Renaissance use of the term came in Fernando de Rojas's novel in dialogue La Celestina, which carried the subtitle of Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea). The story offers a bawdy comedic tale about two lovers from different social castes whose romance is used for financial gain by the nobleman's servants. In the end, all the major protagonists of the work are dead—a tragic outcome. Similarly, Italian dramatist Giovanni Battista Giraldi helped to spur the development of Renaissance tragicomedy through a canon of tragedies that featured happy endings in a nod to his perceived belief about what audiences desired from their theater experience.

Sixteenth-century Italian dramatist Giovanni Battista Guarini cited the advent of Christianity as the cause for his own experiments with tragicomedy. He argued that his idea of tragicomedy—that is, works split evenly between tragic and comedic elements—prevented the audience from falling into unbalanced moods that were either overly melancholic or light-spirited. Such feelings, he believed, were indulgent and in violation of the spirit of Christian ethics. Christianity, he argued, offered levels of faith unavailable to the authors of ancient tragedy. Therefore, there was no need for tragic catharsis when the spirit of God was always evident. As a result, he believed the tragicomedy style to be the best expression of drama.

In sixteenth-century England, tragicomedy became the dominant dramatic form. The earliest known English example of tragicomedy was Nicholas Grimald's Christus Redivivus. Early tragicomedies like those by Grimald and Richard Bower borrowed heavily from classical examples of the genre to create happy conclusions in otherwise tragic stories. Later works by George Whetstone (such as Promos & Cassandra) borrowed equally from works originating from both antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Such plays combined the structure of early tragicomedies with the romantic subplots used by Italian dramatists.

Perhaps the most famous tragicomedies were those by William Shakespeare. Such works as Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well are also sometimes called Shakespeare's problem plays because they verge between dark and light tones and, therefore, defy an easy categorization as either tragedy or comedy. Several of Shakespeare's other plays—such as The Merchant of Venice and later works like The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest—are also often classified as tragicomedies depending on the scholar. Other renowned playwrights of tragicomedies from this period include the team of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, whose works rivaled Shakespeare's in popularity in this era. Among their best-known plays was Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, which heavily influenced the early Stuart era of English tragicomedies. However, after 1642, when London's theaters were forcibly closed for political reasons, English tragicomedy fell into decline.

This form of drama continued to evolve into the modern era, and many contemporary playwrights have used aspects of tragicomedy in their works. Such varied authors as Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard are regularly cited as having authored contemporary works of tragicomedy.

Overview

The often ill-defined and evolving characteristics of tragicomedy have proven to be a recurring point of discussion for academics. By some definitions, tragicomedies—particularly in the ancient world and in the Renaissance—can be partly defined by their incorporation of a wide assortment of characters from across broad social groups. Such works may feature kings and jesters, peasants and noblemen, and gods and servants in equal prominence. In the ancient world, tragicomedies were also characterized by mixtures of comedy and tragedy that enabled a variety of different outcomes. These ranged from fully happy endings for everyone, to a mixed finish in which some characters prevail and others are left to despair, to a completely tragic conclusion in which all the characters suffer or perish.

Renaissance tragicomedy tended to offer a more equitable mixture of tragedy and comedy. Throughout such works, characters would experience highs and lows in equal measures, so that they would encounter separations and catastrophes but also reunions and restorations. Italian Renaissance tragicomedies tended to also incorporate strong romantic subplots and a romanticizing of rural life associated with pastoral literature.

English tragicomedy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras often featured related dual plots: one of an elevated tragedy and another more farcical in tone. The higher dramatic plot would often feature characters of noble birth, while the lower comedic story line would include characters from the working classes and low social castes. These stories, particularly those inspired by Beaumont and Fletcher, often typically featured highly melodramatic story lines, intricate romantic subplots, and dramatic reversals of fortune. Typically, while this form of tragicomedy would not feature any actual deaths, many of the protagonists would almost die.

In many modern incarnations of tragicomedy, the romantic subplots and light comedy are often abandoned in favor of heightened levels of farce. Such works are deliberately absurdist in tone, with the darkly comedic aspects meant to ironically underscore the inherent tragedy and meaninglessness of the characters' lives. Such works as Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Beckett's Waiting for Godot are often cited as examples of absurdist contemporary tragicomedies.

Bibliography

Chen, Xing. "Labelling Shakespeare's 'Last Plays.'" Literature Compass, vol. 12, no. 3, 2015, pp. 93–105.

Curran, John E. Character and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy. University of Delaware, 2014.

García, Lucíano. "Towards a Definition of European Tragicomedy and Romantic Comedy of the Seventeenth Century: The Courtly Fashion in England and Spain." Sederi: Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, sederi.org/docs/yearbooks/10/10%2013GarciaLuciano.pdf. Accessed 9 Jan. 2017.

Kirsch, Arthur. "The Bitter and the Sweet of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well and Montaigne." The Yale Review, vol. 102, no. 2, 2014, pp. 63–84.

Law, Jonathan. "Tragicomedy." The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre. Methuen, 2011, pp. 510–11.

Moore, Timothy. "Tragicomedy as a Running Joke: Plautus' Amphitruo in Performance." Didaskalia: The Journal for Ancient Performance, vol. 1, no. 6, 1994, www.didaskalia.net/issues/supplement1/moore.html. Accessed 9 Jan. 2017.

Mukherji, Subha, and Raphael Lyne, editors. Early Modern Tragicomedy. Boydell & Brewer, 2007.

Myers-Shaffer, Christina. "Tragicomedy." The Principles of Literature: A Guide for Readers and Writers. Barron's, 2000, pp. 105–7.

Pollard, Tanya. "Tragicomedy." The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 2: 1558–1660. Edited by Patrick Cheney and Philip Hardie, Oxford UP, 2015, pp. 419–32.

"Tragicomedy." Literary Devices, literarydevices.net/tragicomedy/. Accessed 9 Jan. 2017.