The boundaries of genres are often blurred in drama and occasionally they lead to the emergence of new sub-genres, e.g., the tragicomedy. Tragicomedies, as the name suggests, intermingle conventions concerning plot, character and subject matter derived from both tragedy and comedy. Thus, characters of both high and low social rank can be mixed as in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (1600), or a serious conflict, which is likely to end in disaster, suddenly reaches a happy ending because of some unforeseen circumstances as in John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1609). Plays with multiple plots which combine tragedy in one plot and comedy in the other are also occasionally referred to as tragicomedies (e.g., Thomas Middleton's and William Rowley's The Changeling, 1622).
Most twentieth century plays do not fit easily into the comic or tragic mold. Tragicomedy is a blending of the two forms - most often a play that lacks deaths but brings its characters close to death, near enough to make it no comedy. Tragicomedy forces its audience to run the gamut of emotional experiences, from laughter to sorrow and passion, but most often it leaves the audience with a bitter and ironic pseudo-comic, pseudo-tragic conclusion (Richard, 1986).
Renaissance dramatists consciously deliberately invented 'tragicomedy' as a new dramatic form, with special qualities. Cutting across the traditional generic boundaries of tragedy and comedy, they aimed for a style of drama which could include everything from the most arcane divine mysteries to the most mundane of characters (such as shepherds, who would normally be the preserve of low-life comedies.) This comprehensiveness aimed to take on board the most massive and ineffable topics of human existence -- time, fate, providence, virtue, evil, and irreconcilable conflicts between reason and emotion. It followed that this could not be achieved within a realistic framework; the issues concerned go beyond common understanding and defy logical analysis.
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