Tragicomedy refers to fictional works that blend aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy refers to a serious play with a happy ending. // Fiction (from the Latin fingere, to form, create) is the genre of imaginative prose literature, including novels and short stories. ... Look up genre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In general usage a tragedy is a play, movie or sometimes a real world event with a sad outcome. ... The word comedy has a classical meaning (comical theatre) and a popular one (the use of humor with an intent to provoke laughter in general). ... The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S... Shakespeare redirects here. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Romeo and Juliet by Ford Madox Brown A play, written by a playwright, or dramatist, is a form of literature, almost always consisting of dialog between characters, and intended for performance rather than reading. ...

Tragicomedy in the theatre

Classical precedent

There is no complete formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical age. It appears that Aristotle had something like the Renaissance meaning of the term (that is, a serious action with a happy ending) in mind when, in Poetics, he discusses tragedy with a dual ending. In this respect, a number of Greek and Roman plays, for instance Alcestis, may be called tragicomedies, though without any definite attributes outside of plot. The term itself originates with Plautus: the prologue to Amphitryon uses the term to justify the play's bringing gods into a predominantly bourgeois play. Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... Aristotles Poetics aims to give an account of poetry. ... A princess in Greek mythology, Alcestis (might of the home) was known for her love for her husband. ... Titus Macchius Plautus, generally referred to simply as Plautus, was a playwright of Ancient Rome. ... Amphitryon, or Amphitrion, in Greek mythology, was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis. ...

Renaissance revival

Italy

Plautus's comment had an arguably excessive impact on Renaissance aesthetic theory, which had largely transformed Aristotle's comments on drama into a rigid theory. For "rule mongers" (the term is Giordano Bruno's), "mixed" works such as those mentioned above, more recent "romances" such as Orlando Furioso, and even The Odyssey were at best puzzles; at worst, mistakes. Two figures helped to elevate tragicomedy to the status of a regular genre, by which is meant one with its own set of rigid rules. Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio, in the mid-sixteenth century, both argued that the tragedy-with-comic-ending (tragedia de lieto fin) was most appropriate to modern times and produced his own examples of such plays. Even more important was Giovanni Battista Guarini. Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, published in 1590, provoked a fierce critical debate in which Guarini's spirited defense of generic innovation eventually carried the day. Guarini's tragicomedy offered modulated action that never drifted too far either to comedy or tragedy, mannered characters, and a pastoral setting. All three became staples of continental tragicomedy for a century and more. Giordano Bruno. ... Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre For other uses, see Odyssey (disambiguation). ... Giovanni Battista Giraldi (November, 1504 - December 30, 1573), surnamed Cynthitus, Cinthio or Cintio, was an Italian novelist and poet. ... Giovanni Battista Guarini (December 10, 1538 – October 7, 1612) was an Italian poet and diplomat. ... Opera in three acts by Handel written in 1712. ...

England

In England, where practice ran ahead of theory, the situation was quite different. In the sixteenth century, "tragicomedy" meant the native sort of romantic play that violated the unities of time, place, and action, that glibly mixed high- and low-born characters, and that presented fantastic actions. These were the features Philip Sidney deplored in his complaint against the "mungrell tragicomedies" of the 1580s, and of which Shakespeare's Polonius offers famous testimony: "The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men." Some aspects of this romantic impulse remain even in the work of more sophisticated playwrights: Shakespeare's last plays, which may well be called tragicomedies, have often been called romances. Philip Sidney. ...

By the early Stuart period, some English playwrights had absorbed the lessons of the Guarini controversy. John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, an adaptation of Guarini's play, was produced in 1608. In the printed edition, Fletcher offered an interesting definition of the term, worth quoting at length: "A tragi-comedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some neere it, which is inough to make it no comedie." Fletcher's definition focuses primarily on events: a play's genre is determined by whether or not people die in it, and in a secondary way on how close the action comes to a death. But, as Eugene Waith showed, the tragicomedy Fletcher developed in the next decade also had unifying stylistic features: sudden and unexpected revelations, outré plots, distant locales, and a persistent focus on elaborate, artificial rhetoric. John Fletcher (1579-1625) was a Jacobean playwright. ...

Some of Fletcher's contemporaries, notably Philip Massinger and James Shirley, wrote successful and popular tragicomedies. Richard Brome also essayed the form, but with less success. And many of their contemporary writers, ranging from John Ford to Lodowick Carlell to Sir Aston Cockayne, made attempts in the genre. Philip Massinger (1583 - 1640) was an English dramatist. ... James Shirley (or Sherley) (September 1596 - October 29, 1666), was an English dramatist. ... Richard Brome (died 1652) was an English dramatist. ... John Ford (baptized April 17, 1586 - c. ... Lodowick Carlell (1602—1675), also Carliell or Carlile, was a seventeenth-century English playwright, active mainly during the Caroline era, 1625–42. ... Sir Aston Cockayne (1608 – 1684) was in his day a well-known Cavalier and a minor literary figure, now best remembered as a friend of Philip Massinger, John Fletcher, Michael Drayton, Richard Brome, Thomas Randolph, and other writers of his generation. ...

Tragicomedy remained fairly popular up to the closing of the theaters in 1642, and Fletcher's works were popular in the Restoration as well. The old styles were of course cast aside as tastes changed in the eighteenth century; the "tragedy with a happy ending" eventually developed into melodrama, in which form it still flourishes.

Later developments

The more subtle criticism that developed after the Renaissance stressed the thematic and formal aspects of tragicomedy, rather than plot. Gotthold Lessing defined it as a mixture of emotions in which "seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure." Even more commonly, tragicomedy's affinity with satire and "dark" comedy have suggested a tragicomic impulse in modern absurdist drama. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the Swiss absurdist, suggested that tragicomedy was the inevitable genre for the twentieth century. Tragicomedy is a common genre in post-World War II British theatre, with authors as varied as Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, John Arden, Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter writing in this genre. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (January 22, 1729 - February 15, 1781), writer, philosopher, publicist, and art thinker, is the most outstanding German representative of the Enlightenment era. ... Friedrich Dürrenmatt (January 5, 1921 – December 14, 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet. ... Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE (born as Tomáš Straussler on July 3, 1937)[1] is an Academy Award winning British playwright of more than 24 plays. ... John Arden is an English playwright born in 1930 (Barnsley/York). ... Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE (born April 12, 1939) is a popular and prolific English playwright. ... Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (born 10 October 1930) is an English playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor, director, author, and political activist, best known for his plays The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), and also for his screenplay adaptations of novels by others, such as...

Tragicomedy in film

Dark comedy was a popular genre in British films of the early 1990s. An example of a dark comedy is Life is Sweet, by British director Mike Leigh. The recent Israeli film Metallic Blues is also an example. Life Is Sweet (1990) is a British film directed by Mike Leigh. ... Mike Leigh OBE (born February 20, 1943 in Broughton, Salford, Lancashire) is an award winning English film and theatre director. ... Metallic Blues (in Hebrew, a transliteration of the English,מטאליק בלוז) is a 2004 film coproduction (Israel/Germany/Canada) directed by Israeli director Danny Verete. ...

Another example is the Academy Award winning Life Is Beautiful which is about an Italian Jew who has a happy life until he is sent to a Nazi concentration camp and sacrifices his life to save his son. Although he never won an Oscar for any of his movie performances, the comedian Bob Hope received two honorary Oscars for his contributions to cinema. ... Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who lives in his own romantic fairy tale world, but must learn how to use...

Also, there are other Academy Award Winning film with tragicomedy. Another for example is Fargo, a story about a pregnant cop who investigate a kidnapping scheme gone wrong. Although he never won an Oscar for any of his movie performances, the comedian Bob Hope received two honorary Oscars for his contributions to cinema. ... Fargo can refer to Fargo, North Dakota Fargo, Oklahoma The movie Fargo by Joel and Ethan Coen A brand of truck The NATO reporting name of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9 fighter aircraft This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share...

References

• Foster, Verna A. The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy. London, Ashgate, 2004.

See also

• Theatre of the absurd
• Outrapo

The Theatre of the Absurd, or Theater of the Absurd (French: Le Théâtre de lAbsurde) is a designation for particular plays written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from...

External links

• Tragicomedy from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare
• Post-war British drama