Tragicommedia

The term “tragicomedy” appears for the first time in the Prologue of Plautus’ Amphitryon, a palliata that presupposes a Greek model. The Latin term tragico[co]moedia (P, tragicomoedia Leo 1895) seems to be a construction based on the Greek lemma (not attested) *τραγι[κο]κωµωδία or *τραγοκωµωδία. It is well known that from the Renaissance to the present this genre has enjoyed various degrees of success in European dramatic production, influencing filmography as well. We investigate the history of the term with reference to classical theatre since the satyr dramas, comedies, and tragedies, especially by Euripides, with their adventurous plots, happy endings, and some comic scenes bordering on the grotesque, do not neatly fall into either the tragic or comic genre. Indeed, they can only be well explained if understood as a “mixed” genre