What is tragicomedy? Tragicomedy is a genre of plays that incorporates elements of both tragic and comic drama. Tragicomedy was first mentioned by the Roman dramatist Plautus in reference to his play Amphitryon, which is widely considered to be the first tragicomedy. Plautus established the nascent tragicomedy definition: for Plautus, tragicomedies were plays in which individuals swap roles that are very distant in hierarchies. Gods and men will trade places, as will masters and slaves. The tragic and comedic elements came from the performances of each role; the gods and masters would adopt comedic characteristics and plot beats, while the men and slaves would adopt a tragic nobility. Plautus' specific definition of tragicomedy would later broaden during the Renaissance, being applicable to all plays that fuse elements of tragedies and comedies.
Tragicomedies tread the line between comedy and tragedy. They typically attempt to maintain the seriousness of a tragedy without the grim and ruinous end. At the same time, they periodically alleviate the weight with comedic moments or scenes to lighten the audience's viewing experience. Tragedies are rarely enjoyable affairs, though they are often rather moving. Comedies rarely inspire as much moral introspection and emotion as a tragedy, but they tend to be much more enjoyable. Tragicomedies attempt to blend the positive potentials in both genres.
Thematically, tragicomedies tend to portray duality in both society and the larger world. Plautus' works initially inspired this trend, with individuals swapping places and being forced to understand the perspective of the other. Later, however, Shakespeare's contributions to the genre of tragicomedy attempted to reflect nature and the natural state of things, thereby aiming to generate a wider social understanding between classes and peoples.
To understand the characteristics of a tragicomedy, one must first look at the characteristics of comedies and tragedies. Both tragedies and comedies borrowed tropes established by Greek dramatists. Comedy characteristics common in tragicomedies are as follows:
Tragedy characteristics common in tragicomedies are as follows:
While Shakespeare's contribution to the tragicomedy genre is notable enough to have his own section below, later tragicomedies tended to focus less on specific character or plot traits and more on generating a sense of dark humor. Two tragicomedy examples achieved this masterfully: Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
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Shakespeare never used the word tragicomedy in reference to his own plays; the designation came long afterwards. Many of Shakespeare's theatrical works have historically been considered "problem plays," as they do not fit into any single genre. Plays that bridge between comedy and tragedy were later considered tragicomedies. The tragicomedy of Shakespeare shaped many subsequent plays in the genre, especially with the focus on realistic portrayal that interweaves the humorous and tragic scenes. Two of his most prominent tragicomedies are described in the following.
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While tragicomedies were traditionally dramas, the genre is equally applicable to film. Tragicomedy movies maintain the same tone as dramas; while the plot particularities oftentimes differ, lacking elements such as mistaken identities, tragicomic films operate under an environment of dark humor.
Wes Anderson, a director known for producing comedies laced with a tinge of dark, tragic humor, has produced a number of tragicomedies over the years. Foremost among these are The Royal Tenenbaums and Darjeeling Limited. Both of these have many comic moments laced over real and painful family drama that has scarred each respective set of relatives.
Outside of Wes Anderson's work, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine has similar tragicomic elements. The movie centers around an extremely poor family attempting to get the youngest girl to a beauty pageant that no one is prepared for. Tragic elements appear through similar themes as the films mentioned above; a broken family is pushed together by circumstances and, in the process, comedic scenes overlay very real trauma.
Tragicomedy is a genre of plays that borrows characteristics from both tragedies and comedies. On the comedic side, wordplay, marriages, births, and mistaken identities are included. Characteristics borrowed from tragedies include death, irreversible consequences, and hamartia (a large error on the part of a character that leads to their misfortune and, in proper tragedies, their ruinous end). Authors oftentimes utilize the tragicomic genre due to its potential to reflect events in a realistic way.
The first work to be labeled a tragicomedy was Plautus' Amphitryon. The most famous playwright to dabble in tragicomedies was Shakespeare. Though he did not view his own plays as tragicomedies, many of his dramas exist in an interstitial space between tragedy and comedy and were therefore classified as tragicomedies later. These include plays such as All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. In more modern terms, both Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Thomas Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead fall under the envelope of tragicomedy. Each of these plays consider serious subject matter through a comedic lens, or have comedic scenes straining above potentially tragic consequences.
Probably most of us recognize the emotions in the masks of tragedy and comedy, but if there were a third for tragicomedy, it would undoubtedly have quite the bewildering expression. We can tell just from the name that a tragicomedy is a dramatic work containing both tragic and comedic elements, but how do these elements combine to create something altogether different from tragedy or comedy?
The term first appeared around the 3rd century B.C.E. when the Roman comedian Plautus used the Latin tragicomoedia to refer to his play Amphitruo. To get a better understanding of how tragicomedy works, let's first take a look at some characteristics of comedy and tragedy, then we'll see how they mesh in Plautus' work.
With these characteristics in mind, let's see if we can't figure out what makes Amphitruo a tragicomedy. In the play, Jupiter, king of the gods, falls in love with the mortal Alcmene, who is married to the farmer, Amphitryon. In order to share her bed, Jupiter disguises himself as Amphitryon and comes to Alcmene while her husband's back is turned. The farmer eventually finds out that his wife has been unfaithful when she ends up pregnant, and he threatens to publically disgrace her. Jupiter quickly intervenes and tells Amphitryon the truth, saving Alcmene from certain doom. In the end, they all celebrate the birth of Jupiter's son by Alcmene, Hercules. Plautus also uses a wide variety of puns and wordplay in this play. Any number or type of characteristics from either genre may be combined to form a tragicomedy, but let's take a closer look at the synopsis to see which ones Plautus chose.
Committing marital infidelity would have meant social death for Alcmene, and, as a woman, she would have most likely met her own physical demise as well, because she wouldn't have been able to provide for herself.
This is certainly a case of mistaken identity, since Alcmene is convinced that Jupiter is her husband. The error in this case would have been the unforgivable breach of the marriage oath; however, because Jupiter intervenes, the error and its consequences are reversed. This makes what could be potentially fatal, a harmless mistake. Also, the story ends in characteristically comedic fashion with the birth of Hercules, and the use of puns adds to the comedic quality.
Now that we've gone through the steps of defining one tragicomedy, here are a few others:
Let's first look at Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well. Shakespeare's title for this tragicomedy perfectly encapsulates the genre's worldview that it's best to take the bad with the good. The play follows the scheming antics of the devoted but low-born Helena as she tries desperately to win the affections of her beloved and noble Bertram. She succeeds in roping him into marriage, but he says he will never accept it until she wears his family ring and bears him a son. To this end, Helena employs a good deal of trickery, including disguising herself as another girl Bertram is after and faking her own death. In the end, Bertram discovers all this treachery, but is so taken by the lengths Helena went to for him that he immediately declares his undying love.
Let's now look at Cyrano de Bergerac. Many playwrights may prefer tragicomedy because they feel it best reflects the mixture of tragic and comedic circumstances in our own lives. And perhaps no play demonstrates this better than Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, which is loosely based on the real-life events surrounding the titular 17th-century playwright. Several of the scenarios depicted in this play have been used again and again in sitcoms and other media, including Cyrano's whispering romantic lines to Christian to help him woo Roxanne. Because of his physical appearance, Cyrano hides his own love for Roxanne and does not let her know that they were his words that won her affection, even after Christian's death. Though at points exceptionally sad (including the end), Cyrano's flamboyance and Rostand's witty wordplay make for many comedic moments throughout the play.
Finally, let's take a look at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In this play, which is perhaps his most notable work, Tom Stoppard examines Shakespeare's Hamlet from a comedic perspective. If you've seen Hamlet, you know that it has one of the bloodier endings in Shakespearean tragedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern not excluded. From their point of view, all of the plotting and courtly intrigue surrounding the king and Prince Hamlet are fragmented pieces of paranoid nonsense which these two apparent dullards have no chance of figuring out. There are several cases of mistaken identity, even between themselves, and Stoppard has his own fun with words throughout the play. However, as we all knew they probably wouldn't, things do not end so well for our title characters.
A tragicomedy combines elements of tragedy and comedy into one work. Characteristics of comedy that can be found in the genre include but are not limited to: marriages and/or births, mistaken identity, and a prevalence of puns and other wordplay. Tragic elements might include literal or metaphorical death(s), severe errors of judgment, and irreversible consequences.
Plautus' Amphitruo was the first work to be labeled a tragicomedy around the 3rd century B.C.E. Much of the view in tragicomedy centers on how well the genre's mixture of tragic and comic situations reflects real-life events. Writers of tragicomedies, such as All's Well that Ends Well (Shakespeare), Cyrano de Bergerac (Rostand), and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Stoppard), all have their own approaches to the genre and their own unique ways of merging the tragic and comedic elements.
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Tragicomedies take characteristics from both tragedies and comedies. For instance, elements of tragedy that may manifest in a tragicomedy are deaths of the characters, irreversible decisions, and hamartia (defined as a pivotal moment in which a character's flaw causes a terrible error in judgment). On the other hand, elements of comedy can consist of a conclusory birth or marriage, clever wordplay, or cases of mistaken identity.
Shakespeare never explicitly regarded his own plays as tragicomedies. However, modern scholars consider many of his "problem plays"--plays that historically fit neither in the genre of comedy nor the genre of tragedy--to be tragicomedies. Shakespeare's tragicomedies portray events in a natural and realistic manner.
While "Romeo and Juliet" diverges from the typical formula of tragedies, it lacks the comedic scenes and tropes to classify as a true tragicomedy. "Romeo and Juliet" fits awkwardly into the tragic genre due to its lack of a noble tragic hero. In the place of an admirable figure brought low by a flaw, "Romeo and Juliet" follows two young, impressionable people given and acting on terrible advice from their peers.
French playwright Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac" is a perfect example of a tragicomedy. While most of the scenes in the play are inherently comedic, they are caused by the main character's tragic self-consciousness that prevents him from ever finding happiness. In retrospect, this causes many of the comedic moments to have a dark, pessimistic humor.
