Turning Comedy into Tragedy

     "Tragedy when the feeling's gone and you can't go on, it's tragedy...when  you lose control and you got no soul it's tragedy!" The words from this song inspired an amazing project idea. As implied by the song, what happens "when the feelings gone"? Why "can't you go on" or "lose control". What happened to your soul? Comedy and tragedy, two ends of the spectrum, so very different from one another and yet so interconnected.  Comedy, generally, is full of humor, banter, lightheartedness, pleasantry, and always with a happy ending. Tragedy is the implied opposite with everything that could possibly go wrong happening and ending in something sad, usually death. So how do you take a light, happy story and turn it into something depressing? 

       The basic outline for a comedy starts with the characters. There is more than one main character, each a likable hero with weaknesses. Take a Midnight Summer's Dream for example. It has many main characters, not just one. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Now, each one is likable in their own way with their own weaknesses. To really get a comedy going, at least one of these characters has a disagreement with one of their parents. Hermia fills this role by not wanting to marry the man her father wants her to marry. Her weakness is her lust for Lysander. Let's face it, teenagers wouldn't know love if it slapped them in the face. 

       This weakness is then turned into a petty concern. For Hermia, the simple matter of "Is she going to listen to her father?" is the petty concern. This petty concern leads into a play full of mix ups and nearly broken hearts. Eventually everything is put right and the story has a happy ending with several marriages. So far, a comedy consists of many main characters that are likable heroes with weaknesses, one having a disagreement with a parent, with story that ends in a happy marriage. 

     The next part of a comedy is the theme. The theme for a comedy usually centers on appearance versus reality. In a Midsummer Night's Dream, the four teenagers are running around in a forest at night not sure if what is happening is real or not. When they wake in the morning, they think they all had the same bizarre dream. The same came be said for Bottom and Titania. Appearance becomes reality in a comedy. 

     For the audience, they see everything that happens so they don't feel much of connection to any of the characters on stage. The ridiculousness of it all actually makes the audience feel superior. The audience gets this attitude of "that would never happen to me, I would notice this or that." So the audience laughs at the silliness that these characters could be so dense. They are detached from the happenings. 

     Now, still using A Midsummer Night's Dream, we get to the tragedy of it all. This play ends in marriage but marriage isn't all butterflies and daisies. If Shakespeare had made a sequel he probably would not have made it nearly as happy. Let's say that it's thirty years later, Hermia and Lysander have a couple of kids and perhaps they aren't getting on as well as they used to. In real life, we call this a reality check. 

    This "reality check" starts by isolating a single main character. Let's isolate Hermia. Something has happened in her relationship with Lysander, he's pulling away and she is feeling very vulnerable. To turn her into a tragic hero, she must have a tragic flaw. Perhaps she still doesn't recognize she was in lust and not love with him so she believes that because she is still "in love" she can't leave him. That her leads to wonder about serious, profound concerns. These could be anything from "Is this what love truly feels like?" to "Is this how marriage is supposed to be? Is it worth fighting for?" 

    The theme of a tragedy usually stems from these concerns, typically revenge or honor. More than likely Hermia will not be seeking revenge but will be seeking to save her honor. It would terribly embarrassing to admit that perhaps your father had picked the better man but in your childish rebellion you picked the one person your father couldn't stand. There may be revenge in the background, if say; Demetrius breaks free of the spell placed on him to fall in love with Helena. He may think that Helena was a witch who enchanted him and seek revenge on her. 

   When an audience watches a tragedy they are much more invested in the characters. They sympathize with the main character who has been wronged by all the others. They pity them; maybe even put themselves in their shoes. They fear for that character as they would fear for a real person. The audience feels no superiority and though they know the story won't end well they keep hoping that things will look up for that character so they won't have to suffer anymore. 

   Of course, a tragedy has a sad ending. This is typically a death. Hermia kills herself in her depression over the rift between herself and Lysander. In his guilt, Lysander goes crazy and becomes a "Poor Tom" wandering around in the woods spouting nonsense. Maybe Demetrius kills Helena. 

    While it seems like there is no way to pull a comedy out of a tragedy, it is really simple. The characters will be different simply because we killed the ones we knew. Whoever survives the end of the tragedy become the main characters for the comedy to come. Then the cycle starts over. This is the never ending circle of happy to sad. The ups and downs of real life put into a stage production in parts; the happy part of life becomes the comedy and the bad part of life becomes the tragedy.