Tragicomedy

The word itself originates with the Roman comic playwright Plautus, who coined the term (tragicomoedia in Latin) somewhat facetiously in the prologue to his play Amphitryon.

The character Mercury, sensing the indecorum of the inclusion of both kings and gods alongside servants in a comedy, declares that the play had better be a "tragicomoedia":[3]I will make it a mixture: let it be a tragicomedy.

These were the features Philip Sidney deplored in his complaint against the "mungrell Tragy-comedie" of the 1580s, and of which Shakespeare's Polonius offers famous testimony: "The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individuable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light.

Fletcher's definition focuses primarily on events: a play's genre is determined by whether or not people die in it, and in a secondary way on how close the action comes to a death.

But, as Eugene Waith showed, the tragicomedy Fletcher developed in the next decade also had unifying stylistic features: sudden and unexpected revelations, outré plots, distant locales, and a persistent focus on elaborate, artificial rhetoric.

The old styles were cast aside as tastes changed in the eighteenth century; the "tragedy with a happy ending" eventually developed into melodrama, in which form it still flourishes.

"[8] Tragicomedy's affinity with satire and "dark" comedy have suggested a tragicomic impulse in modern theatre with Luigi Pirandello who influenced many playwrights including Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard.

[11] Films including Life is Beautiful, Mary and Max, Parasite, Jojo Rabbit, The Banshees of Inisherin, Beau is Afraid, Robot Dreams, and Memoir of a Snail have been described as tragicomedies.

[12][13][14] Television series including Succession, Killing Eve, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Fleabag, I May Destroy You, BoJack Horseman, South Park, Steven Universe Future, Moral Orel, Barry, Made for Love, The White Lotus and Young Sheldon have also been described as tragicomedies.