Tragic-comedy Drama

Tragic-comedy Drama

Tragic-comedy is a literary device used in fictional works. It contains both tragedy and comedy elements. It is a drama or a situation blending tragic and comic elements. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can variously describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending. The term was coined by Roman playwright Plautus (254 BC to 184 BC) in the prologue to his play Amphytryon as an excuse for mixing in it slaves and gods, since according to the tenets of classical drama gods and kings belonged to tragedy and ordinary people to comedy.

According to Verna Foster notes in the literary encyclopedia tragic-comedy is a slippery genre. As well as incorporating elements from tragedy and comedy, tragic-comedy has often been crossed (and sometimes confused) with pastoral, romance, satire, serious drama, black comedy, and other genres. Not surprisingly, the term tragic-comedy has been used vaguely and loosely, especially as the genre seems to reinvent itself every time it appears in the history of drama and theatre. In one sense, tragic-comedy is coterminous with literature and life itself. But in dramatic practice tragic-comedy comes into being or at least can be recognized only after tragedy and comedy have first established themselves. While plays that combine tragic and comic effects in various ways may be identified in all periods of drama.

During the Renaissance, tragic-comedy developed as a deviation from the classical tragedy. The term was used to define a play in which the action moves towards a tragic climax but an unexpected turn of fortune brings about a happy ending. The plot is built around unexpected reversals, averted catastrophes, mistaken identities and timely recognitions which prevent killings. Sometimes serious actions alternate with comic situations, but humor is not a standard ingredient. Because of its blending of comedy and tragedy, tragic-comedy is referred to as a hybrid or mixed form.

Mostly, the characters in tragic-comedy are exaggerated and sometimes there might be a happy ending after a series of unfortunate events. It is incorporated with jokes throughout the story just to lighten the tone. Some characteristics of tragic-comedy are improbable plot, unnatural situations, characters of high social class, usually of the nobility, love as the central interest, pure love and gross love often being contrasted, highly complicated plot, rapid action, contrasts of deep villainy and exalted virtue, saving of hero and heroine in the nick of time, penitent villain, disguises, surprises, jealousy, treachery, intrigue, enveloping action of war or rebellion.the characteristics of tragic-comedy are there is typically at least one death (real or metaphorical), and there are frequently tragedies in which one or more of the characters are dead by the end, but tends to end either with a marriage or a birth. Either way, there are typically some romantic or erotic aspects present.

The main purpose of tragic-comedy is to describe dual nature of reality where both modes can coexist, perhaps simultaneously. Therefore, the interweaving of both aspects gives both a comic and tragic view of life. Tragic-comedy is mainly used in dramas and theater. Since tragic plays focus exclusively on protagonists, while comic plays are devoid of focus and concern, therefore such plays which fell between these two categories were developed. These types of plays present both modes of life through absurdity and seriousness.

The Winter’s Tale is an example of tragic-comedy drama. It by William Shakespeare. It tells about King Leontes of Sicilia begs his childhood friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, to extend his visit to Sicilia. Polixenes protests that he has been away from his kingdom for nine months, but after Leontes's pregnant wife, Hermione, pleads with him he relents and agrees to stay a little longer. Leontes, meanwhile, has become possessed with jealousy—convinced that Polixenes and Hermione are lovers, he orders his loyal retainer, Camillo, to poison the Bohemian king. Instead, Camillo warns Polixenes of what is afoot, and the two men flee Sicilia immediately.

Furious at their escape, Leontes now publicly accuses his wife of infidelity, and declares that the child she is bearing must be illegitimate. He throws her in prison, over the protests of his nobles, and sends to the Oracle of Delphi for what he is sure will be confirmation of his suspicions. Meanwhile, the queen gives birth to a girl, and her loyal friend Paulina brings the baby to the king, in the hopes that the sight of the child will soften his heart. He only grows angrier, however, and orders Paulina's husband, Lord Antigonus, to take the child and abandon it in some desolate place. While Antigonus is gone, the answer comes from Delphi—Hermione and Polixenes are innocent, and Leontes will have no heir until his lost daughter is found. As this news is revealed, word comes that Leontes's son, Mamillius, has died of a wasting sickness brought on by the accusations against his mother. Hermione, meanwhile, falls in a swoon, and is carried away by Paulina, who subsequently reports the queen's death to her heartbroken and repentant husband.

Antigonus, meanwhile abandons the baby on the Bohemian coast, reporting that Hermione appeared to him in a dream and bade him name the girl Perdita and leave gold and other tokens on her person. Shortly thereafter, Antigonus is killed by a bear, and Perdita is raised by a kindly Shepherd. Sixteen years pass, and the son of Polixenes, Prince Florizel, falls in love with Perdita. His father and Camillo attend a sheepshearing in disguise and watch as Florizel and Perdita are betrothed—then, tearing off the disguise, Polixenes intervenes and orders his son never to see the Shepherd's daughter again. With the aid of Camillo, however, who longs to see his native land again, Florizel and Perdita take ship for Sicilia, after using the clothes of a local rogue, Autolycus, as a disguise. They are joined in their voyage by the Shepherd and his son, a Clown, who are directed there by Autolycus.

In Sicilia, Leontes—still in mourning after all this time—greets the son of his old friend effusively. Florizel pretends to be on a diplomatic mission from his father, but his cover is blown when Polixenes and Camillo, too, arrive in Sicilia. What happens next is told to us by gentlemen of the Sicilian court: the Shepherd tells everyone his story of how Perdita was found, and Leontes realizes that she is his daughter, leading to general rejoicing. The entire company then goes to Paulina's house in the country, where a statue of Hermione has been recently finished. The sight of his wife's form makes Leontes distraught, but then, to everyone's amazement, the statue comes to life—it is Hermione, restored to life. As the play ends, Paulina and Camillo are engaged, and the whole company celebrates the miracle.

The Winter’s Tale is considered a tragic-comedy because of its two part elements. The first three acts contain elements of tragedy, while the pastoral fourth and fifth acts contain elements of comedy. The play is characterized by several improbable events, including Leontes's sudden outburst of jealousy and the amazing restoration of Hermione sixteen years after her apparent death. Modern commentators continue to examine Leontes's behavior, attempting in a variety of ways to account for his seemingly irrational jealousy. The Winter’s Tale is like Shakespeare’s comedies, has a decidedly happy ending, families are reconciled, a marriage is promised, and social order is restored.

The first three acts, set in the Sicilian court, are dark and claustrophobic. This is mostly the result of Leontes’s jealousy and tyranny, which pretty much dominates the first half of the play. Of course, this is no big surprise, given that King Leontes throws his wife in prison, plots the death of his best friend, throws his infant daughter away, and basically causes the premature death of his young son.

The play’s tone shifts dramatically as the setting shifts to Bohemia (sixteen years in the future), where the summer sheep-shearing festival is underway and the love between Perdita and Florizel blossoms. The festive mood briefly darkens when Polixenes threatens the young couple’s happiness but the heavy mood begins to lift almost as soon as the Bohemian cast makes its way over to the Sicilian court (where Leontes and his kingdom have been suffering for sixteen years). After the revelation of Perdita’s true identity and the miraculous “resurrection” of Hermione, the atmosphere turns joyous, as family and friends are reunited and the promise of marriage looms in the future.

William Shakespeare's style of writing was borrowed from the conventions of the day and adapted to his needs. Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical written for actors to declaim rather than speak. However, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama.

The Winter’s Tale has a reputation for its difficult language, which can be a bit off-putting until you get the hang of it. That’s because most of the action takes place at court and, as we know, the nobility tends to speak in a way that’s in keeping with their high social status. In addition, Shakespeare as a playwright did not simply use prose. The usual style of writing and speech, in which, for example, this information (apart from quotations) is written  but also rhyme.

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter with clever use of puns and imagery. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet.

Shakespeare's poetic genius was allied with a practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, Shakespeare dramatised stories from sources such as Petrarch and Holinshed. He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In his late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.

In some of his early works, he added punctuation at the end of the lines to strengthen the rhythm written with his pen. He and other dramatists at the time used this form of blank verse for much of the dialogue between characters to elevate the poetry of drama. To end many scenes in his plays he used a rhyming couplet, thus creating suspense.

Reading The Winter’s Tale often feels like reading a very lengthy poem, and that’s because Shakespeare’s characters often speak in verse. Every second syllable is accented, so this is classic iambic pentameter. Since these lines have no rhyme scheme (“seek” and “commodity” don’t rhyme), we call it unrhymed iambic pentameter, which is also known as blank verse. In Shakespeare’s plays, characters on the lower end of the social ladder tend to speak in prose. Characters like the Clown, Mopsa, and Dorcas (the play’s country bumpkins) don’t talk in a special poetic rhythm; they just talk. For example, when Mopsa wants the Clown to buy her a present she says “Pray you now, buy it” (4.4.6).

References

Chaney, Edward. (2000). The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance 2nd ed. Routledge.

Foster, Verna A. (2004). The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy. UK: Ashgate.

Pafford, John Henry Pyle. 1962. The Winter's Tale. Arden Edition.

The Free Encyclopedia. Tragicomedy. 20 October 2016, at 05:08. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragicomedy