Read Next
tragicomedy
literature
- Related Topics:
- tragedy
- comedy
- Schauspiel
- genre
tragicomedy, dramatic work incorporating both tragic and comic elements. When coined by the Roman dramatist Plautus in the 2nd century bc, the word denoted a play in which gods and men, masters and slaves reverse the roles traditionally assigned to them, gods and heroes acting in comic burlesque and slaves adopting tragic dignity. This startling innovation may be seen in Plautus’ Amphitryon. In the Renaissance, tragicomedy became a genre of play that mixed tragic elements into drama that was mainly comic. The Italian writer Battista Guarini defined tragicomedy as having most of tragedy’s elements—e.g., a certain gravity of diction, the ...(100 of 395 words)