1. Chapter 4

2.  Genre
 A French word meaning “category” or “type”
 Oldest and best-know genres are:
▪ Tragedy
▪ Comedy
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3. Tragedy – Dramatic form involving serious actions of
universal significance and with important moral and
philosophical implications, usually with an unhappy
ending.
Conditions or Climate for Tragedy – (Golden Age in
Greece 5th
Century BCE and Renaissance 14th
-17th
century in
Europe)
1) Human beings are capable of vast
accomplishments
2) World is potentially cruel and unjust
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4.  Traditional Tragedy
 Tragic Heroes and Heroines
▪ A person of stature—king, queen, general
▪ Stand as symbols of an entire culture or society
▪ Trapped in a fateful web of tragic circumstances
 Tragic Fate
 Acceptance of Responsibility
 Tragic Verse
 The Effects of Tragedy
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5.  Modern Tragedy
 No queens or kings as central figures
 Written in prose rather than poetry
 Probe the same depths and ask the same
questions
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6. Comedy – in general, a play that is light in tone,
concerned with issues that are not serious, has a happy
ending and is designed to amuse.
Characteristics of Comedy
 Suspension of Natural Laws
▪ Slapstick – Type of comedy or comic business that relies on
ridiculous physical activity – often violent in nature – for its
humor.
 Contrast Between Individuals and the Social Order
 The Comic Premise
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7. Comic Premise – Idea or concept in a comedy that turns
the accepted notion of things upside down.
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8. Comedy (Point of View) – the world is relatively normal
and the individual is absurd and out of sync with reality.
(Tartuffe, Pee-wee Herman, many Jim Carey movies)
Modern Comedies and especially Tragicomedy (Point
of View) – The world is absurd and ridiculous and an
ordinary person is set at odds against it. (Seeking a Friend
for the End of the World, Zombieland)
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9.  Forms of Comedy
 Farce – dramatic genre usually regarded as a subclass of comedy,
with emphasis on plot complications and with few or no intellectual
pretensions.
▪ Thrives on exaggeration
▪ Has no intellectual pretensions
▪ Aims are entertainment and laughter
▪ Has excessive plot complications
▪ Humor results from ridiculous situations as well as
pratfalls and horseplay
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10.  Forms of Comedy continued
 Burlesque – Satire of a more serious form of drama
▪ Relies on knockabout physical humor, gross
exaggeration, and occasional vulgarity
▪ Historically, it was a ludicrous imitation of other
forms of drama
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11. 11
Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (A Comedy of Manners)
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12.  Forms of Comedy continued
 Satire
▪ Uses wit, especially sophisticated language; irony;
and exaggeration to expose or attack evil and
foolishness
▪ http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/
 Domestic Comedy
▪ Usually deals with family situations
▪ Found in TV situation comedies
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13.  Forms of Comedy continued
 Comedy of Manners – form of comic drama that became
popular in 17th
century France and the English Restoration,
emphasizing a cultivated or sophisticated atmosphere and witty
dialogue.
▪ Concerned with pointing out the foibles and
peculiarities of the upper class
▪ Uses verbal wit
 Comedy of Ideas
▪ Uses comic techniques to debate intellectual
propositions such as the nature of war, cowardice,
and romance
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14.  Heroic Drama – serious but basically optimistic drama,
written in verse or elevated prose, with noble or heroic characters in
extreme situations or unusual adventures
 Serious drama that has heroic or noble
characters and certain other traits of classic
tragedy
 Has a happy ending
 Assumes a basically optimistic worldview
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15.  Domestic Drama (or Bourgeois) – drama dealing with
problems – particularly family problems – of middle and lower class
characters.
 Deals with people from everyday life instead of kings,
queens, and nobility
 In last 150 years, has replaced both classical tragedy and
heroic drama as the predominant type of serious drama
 Common themes are:
▪ Problems of society
▪ Struggles within a family
▪ Dashed hopes
▪ Renewed determination
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16.  Melodrama
 Means “song drama” or “music drama”
 Originally comes from the Greek
 Made popular by the French at end of 18th
century and beginning of 19th
century
 “Music” refers to the background music that
accompanied these plays
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17.  Melodrama continued
 Relies on surface effects that create
suspense, fear, nostalgia, etc.
 Heroes and heroines are clearly delineated
from villains
 Has easily recognizable stock characters
 Virtue is always victorious
 Has a suspenseful plot
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18.  Tragicomedy – during the Renaissance, a play having
tragic themes and noble characters but a happy ending; today, a
play in which serious and comic elements are integrated.
▪ Point of view is mixed
▪ Prevailing attitude is a synthesis, or fusion, of the
serious and the comic
 Shakespearean Tragicomedy
 Modern Tragicomedy
 Theatre of the Absurd – Plays expressing the
dramatist’s sense of the absurdity of human
existence.
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