I was pondering yesterday the three categories of Shakespearean plays: comedy, tragedy, and history (had lots of pondering time since my classes were test taking). If our lives are plays that we write, as many literary giants suggest, what kind of play or movie would you like to write? Is what you want to write what you actually are writing? The movie “Stranger than Fiction” takes an interesting twist on this idea, where the main character’s life is actually being written by a novelist whose voice he hears in his head. He desperately tries to figure out what kind of story she’s writing, and is saddened to discover that she only writes tragedies. That’s better than a history, though. Remember our lesson from last week? You can identify histories because they bore you to tears.
Might there be another category, though? Just because everyone survives to the end, does it have to be a comedy? Maybe so, but maybe it can be a comedy with pith. We laugh often and with great gusto, but there are also profound moments of joy, beauty and pain. I think I’ve heard the term dramedy before. Yes, dramedy would be my preferred genre.
1 comment:
I did not realize there was a historical category to Shakespeare. What does that entail, and how does it differ from the other two?
My would probably take the form of "an independent film".
Is not fantasy a legitimate category?
The original definition of comedy was a play where there were no deaths.
My category would probably be something like "moralistic, fetishistic and political".
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