Tragicomedy

A tragicomedy describes a drama in the literature and in the theater, in which the features of the tragedy as well as comedy are closely linked. In a broader sense, the term refers to a tragedy which, besides the tragic and comic elements, such as the old Spanish and English tragedies.

The genus

Invented the term " tragicomedy " of Plautus ( 254-184 BC), to name the combination of the two elements in his Amphitryon. But Aristotle and Euripides had already attached in the theater of ancient Greece, a comedy end to a tragedy.

Was widely spread the genre of tragicomedy as tragicomédie in the French theater of the 17th century, where it in the 1630s, ie at the beginning of the era of French classicism, a heyday, eg in the form of one of the most famous pieces of French literature Le Cid by Pierre Corneille ( 1636). Had the classic tragicomédie, much like a tragédie to play in royal or other high-ranking circles that meet three units of time, place and action and in pairs to use rhyming alexandrine as meter. The basic difference to tragédie was that they did not end with the death of the protagonist or without but mandatory to have a cheerful or even happy ending. Comedy in the modern sense was not part of the program tragicomédie. She was of the gambling preferably in bourgeois circles comédie reserved.

Tragicomic referred to today in common parlance, an event which was to be expected in a tragic, that is unfortunate outcome in all its development, but surprisingly good, that takes happy ending, which also acts funny in his way.

"I call quite comedy not an idea that merely aroused laughter, but an idea that is for everyone. Tragedy is to see only the ernsthaftern part of the audience, the heroes of old in their light and to measure its value is capable of. So were the Greek tragedies perpetuation strange people of their country in distinguishing actions or fate; Thus, the tragedies of Shakespeare were true representations of the stories of ancient and modern nations. The comedies of that but were for the people, and the difference between laughing and crying was just an invention of later art critics who did not agree, why the greater part of the people inclined had to laugh as cry, and the closer it or the state of wildness to him the origin from, the more his comedies had to approach the comic. "

Tragi-comedies in recent German theater

After 1945, the number of tragicomic dramas took too strong. Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote about the genus, it " is the only possible dramatic form, say today the tragic ". Because the tragedy set as Dürrenmatt in his text Theater problems from 1955 says, " guilt, distress, degree, overview, responsibility " forward to achieve their goal, the purification of the individual. In the confusion of the modern world, so Dürrenmatt, guilt 'll blurred and deported, modernity come at just the grotesque.

Well-known examples are:

• Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: The Tutor (1774 )
• Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening (1891 )
• Gerhart Hauptmann: Rats (1911 )
• Zuckmayer: The Captain of Köpenick. A German Tale ( 1931)
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt: The Visit of the Old Lady (1956 )
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt: The Physicists ( 1962)
• Max Frisch: Biedermann and the Arsonists (1958 )