Cheryl E. Merritt
TRAGEDY has the solemnity, seriousness and finality we often associate with death. Tragedy suggest an incompatibility between the energy of surge of life and the laws of life or norms of society.
Comedy has the joy and fertility and suggestion of a new life we often associate with marriage and birth. Comedy suggests that norms are valid and necessary.
Tragicomedy is much newer than tragedy and comedy. It appears about 186 B.C., when Plautus spoke of tragicocomoedia in his “Amphitryon”, a Roman comedy in which gods assume mortal shapes in order to dupe a husband and seduce his wife. Tragicomedy is sometimes defined as a mixture or as a play in which bits of comedy are added to a tragedy. Some may feel that it is not so much a union of tragedy and comedy but an exclusion of both, lacking the awe we associate with tragedy and the fun we associate with comedy.
