Tragic-Comedy Sem 3-Unit 1

 

Tragic-Comedy

As the name implies, Tragic-Comedy is half tragedy and half comedy, and is said to be mingled harmoniously together. It is different from tragedy as it contains comic relief and from comedy that is said to have potentially tragic background. It is a form by itself with a purpose of its own.

                The comic relief in a tragedy serves only to deepen the tragic effect and does not materially affect the tone of the play.

Example: 1. the function of Porter in Macbeth is not to be a comic figure but to show his drunken garrulousness (the habit of talking a lot, especially about things that are not important) and ignorance in murdering Duncan actually heightens the audience awareness of the horrible deed,

Grave-digger in hamlet

Fool in King Lear

All these comic characters are actually not meant to evoke untroubled laughter as the comic characters usually do, but they add their own queer (strange) fancies to the tragic theme.

A comedy with a tragic background similarly is said to be more effective for example the wrongs done by the main characters at the opening of the play, like in As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, they make the story and it makes us feel happy when they are corrected during the play.

But Tragic-Comedy stands on a different footing altogether. It is a complete tragedy up to a certain point and a completer comedy thereafter. The Complication (problem/obstacle) sets forth a tragic theme, and the Denouement (falling action/final part) turns it into comedy. We can say that the Rising action is tragedy and the falling action is comedy. So it is the climax that separates one from the other. One of the best examples of such dramas is Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. The unusual structure of this type of play gives different treatment to its theme. The plot is not what one might expect in a tragedy or comedy but it’s a tale that is mingled with weal(wound/scar) and woe(unhappiness) which frequently verges (ends) on the improbable (something that is not true or doesn’t happen).

                The characters again are not always on one plane (standards/stage/degree). Many undergo a transformation, sometimes natural, sometimes rather forced, just before the play closes. The supernatural and the pastoral are also freely exploited.

Origin and History

Tragic-Comedy was unknown to the Greeks, whose Unity of Action definitely forbade the mixture of the tragic and the comic element. A comic Latin dramatist Plautus tried attempting something of this sort in his play Amphitruo which he called a ‘tragico-comoedia,’ but that was perhaps a mere(small) freak(unexpected) of genius and not the result of a deliberate artistic aim.

The English form arose during the reign of James I under Italian and Spanish influence, one was responsible for the pastoral element and the other for the romantic intrigue, both of which are the characteristic of the English Tragic-Comedy.

With numerous variations the dramatic romance maintained itself on the stage till the closing of the theatres in 1642. After which it was said to have disappeared, though the tragic-comic element became indispensable (essential/necessary) to the Sentimental comedy of the 18^th century and the serious play of the modern times.

 PROS & CONS of Tragic-Comedy

1.  Opposed by those who judged it by its principles and not its perceptions. Sidney ruled it out he said that neither the admiration nor sympathy/sorrow can be obtained by mixing tragedy and comedy (tragic-comedy) & Milton condemned it, Addison called it one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into poets thoughts. All these poets took a stand on the classical principle and none of them explained why such mixture was unnatural.

2. Dryden supports it by saying that ‘we have invented, increase and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the stage, which is ever known to the ancients or moderns of a nation that is Tragi-Comedy. Dr. Johnson said ‘it may be allowed upon the stage, which pretends only to be the mirror of life.