Tragicomedy

A Tragicomedy is a story that is both a tragedy and a comedy at the same time.

Origin of the Word

Plautus invented the word Tragicomedy for his play Amphytrion. In it Mercury notices that there are gods in a play that’s supposed to be a comedy and says that it should be a tragicomedy instead.

Renaissance

In Italy, a man named Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio said that people should write tragedies with happy endings. He called them “Tragicomedies”. He said tragedies were better as books but tragicomedies were better as plays. In 1590, Giovanni Battista Guarini wrote a play called The Faithful Shepherd. People weren’t sure if it were a comedy or a tragedy, so they called it a tragicomedy.

Shakespeare

Some people criticized William Shakespeare for putting jokes in tragedies and sad things in comedies. So they said that some of his plays were not tragedies or comedies. They called them tragicomedies.