Comedy & Tragedy

Question 1

Describe tragedy

Answer 1

1. Characters: individuals(hamlet)
2. Plot is about: the downfall of the protagonist due to a fatal character flaw and crushing events
3. Plot is driven: iron, fate, unavoidable calamity, irresistible undoing.
4. Plot structure: a steady and logical accumulation of snowballing events
5. Story resolved/ ends: a death, separation, or an undoing
6. Story seems like: a moment crystallized in time to horrid to be forgotten, so let it be a less onto us all….

Question 2

Describe comedy

Answer 2

1. Character: types (“wicked stepmother”)
2. Plot is about: laughable, amusing people, caught up in error(lovesick) or confusion(frog prince) that does not result in pain off death
3. Plot is driven: improbability, blind, luck, happy chance
4. Plot structure: jumble of events that “pop-up” and are strung together like pearl necklaces
5. Story resolved/ends: things coming together(marriage) merrily ever after
6. Story seems like: a timeless situation that could happen, albeit(though) with different people, anytime, any place just like that…

Question 3

Define comedy

Answer 3

Intended to amuse and provoke laughter

Question 4

Define comedy of manners

Answer 4

Pits 2 opposing sides of society (powerless youth and social conventions)

Question 5

Define parody or satire

Answer 5

Persons or institution are depicted as ridiculous and corrupt

Question 6

Define “screwball” comedy

Answer 6

Bizarre characters and improbable events

Question 7

Define “black” comedy

Answer 7

That laughs at the darker elements of human nature

Question 8

Define “Romance” comedy

Answer 8

Focuses on the foil led if those falling in love (“rom-com”)

Question 9

Define tragedy

Answer 9

The protagonist, some one of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of circumstance ps with which he cannot deal

Question 10

Define medieval tragedy

Answer 10

From boom to bust be an unpredictable turn of the “wheel of fortune”

Question 11

Define Senecan tragedy

Answer 11

(Ancient) written to be recited not acted

Question 12

Define revenge tragedy

Answer 12

Tales of murder, revenge, ghosts, mutilation, and carnage

Question 13

Define domestic tragedy

Answer 13

(Modern) middle or lower class protagonist suffers from a common place or domestic disaster

Question 14

Define epic tragedy

Answer 14

Dramatic interpretation of decisive historic events

Question 15

Drama tools

Answer 15

Stage design
Actors
Writers
Director