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| Tragicomedy of the Renaissance | |
|---|---|
| Name | Tragicomedy of the Renaissance |
| Period | Renaissance |
| Regions | Italy, England, Spain, France |
| Notable works | The Duchess of Malfi, The Changeling, Orlando Furioso, Il Pastor Fido |
| Notable figures | John Webster, John Fletcher, Lope de Vega, Torquato Tasso, Giambattista Guarini |
Tragicomedy of the Renaissance Tragicomedy of the Renaissance denotes a hybrid dramatic genre that flourished across Italy, England, Spain, and France during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, combining elements from Greek drama, Senecan tragedy, Plautus, Terence, Aristotle, Horace and Dante Alighieri. Influenced by courts and urban theatres tied to patrons such as the Medici family, the Stuart dynasty, the Habsburgs, and the Spanish monarchy, it engaged authors and companies like the Commedia dell'arte, the King's Men, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and the Compañía de Lope de Vega.
Tragicomedy is defined by a blend of tragic stakes and comic resolution, deploying motifs drawn from Ovid, Virgil, Plutarch, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Cicero, Plautus and Terence alongside Christian iconography from Augustine of Hippo and liturgical drama associated with Notre-Dame de Paris. Typical features include tonal shifts used by Niccolò Machiavelli, dramatic reversals reminiscent of Seneca the Younger, elevated rhetoric influenced by Petrarchism, and pastoral elements from Giovanni Boccaccio, Alessandro Manzoni, Giambattista Guarini and Torquato Tasso. Playwrights exploited aristocratic themes linked to the House of Gonzaga, the House of Este, and the House of Savoy while using conventions propagated by acting troupes such as the Zanni and entrepreneurs associated with Philip III of Spain.
Origins trace to Italian experiments in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, notably at courts like the Este court, the Ferrara court, and in cities including Venice, Florence, Rome, and Mantua. Influences derived from humanists including Erasmus, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla and theorists like Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio and Ariosto (Orlando Furioso). The English reception occurred through ambassadors, translations, and touring companies connected to figures such as Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, John Webster, John Fletcher and patrons like James I. Spanish development involved dramatists tied to Philip II of Spain and institutions like the Corral de la Cruz, while French engagement intersected with salons associated with Cardinal Richelieu and dramatists linked to Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine.
Prominent practitioners included Italian authors Giambattista Guarini (Il Pastor Fido), Torquato Tasso (Aminta), and Lodovico Ariosto; English dramatists John Webster (The Duchess of Malfi), John Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess), Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton (The Changeling co-authored with William Rowley''), Ben Jonson (satiric responses), and William Shakespeare (experiments observable in Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale). Spanish and Portuguese contributions came from Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, and Feliz Lope de Vega y Carpio with plays staged at venues like the Corral de comedias, while French examples linked to Jean de La Croix and early baroque dramatists. Theatrical adaptations and translations circulated via printers such as Aldus Manutius, Christopher Barker, William Jaggard, and Juan de la Cuesta.
Staging conventions blended court masques associated with Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson with public playhouse practices at the Globe Theatre, the Blackfriars Theatre, the Red Bull Theatre, and Spanish corrales like the Corral de la Cruz. Scenery and machinery drew on innovations from Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio, and Giovanni Battista Aleotti while music incorporated composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Gabrieli, William Byrd, and Alonso Lobo. Actor companies including the King's Men, Queen's Men, Adventures troupe and Spanish compañías used stock characters from Commedia dell'arte (e.g., Arlecchino, Pantalone). Censorship and licensing intersected with offices like the Lord Chamberlain's Men overseen by figures such as Sir Walter Raleigh and legal frameworks influenced by decrees from monarchs like Elizabeth I and Philip III of Spain.
Tragicomedies informed Restoration writers such as Thomas Otway, John Dryden, Sir William Davenant, and Aphra Behn and shaped neoclassical debates involving Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille. The genre's techniques reverberated in Goethe's engagements with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Romantic revisions by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Victorian appropriations by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Modernist and postmodern responses emerged in works by T. S. Eliot, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Federico García Lorca, Eugene O'Neill, and Harold Pinter.
Scholarly debates center on definitions argued by critics such as A. C. Bradley, F. R. Leavis, E. M. W. Tillyard, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Stephen Greenblatt, Derek Pearsall and Lisa Jardine. Historiography engages archival research in collections like the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, and the Archivo General de Indias, with textual studies by editors at Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Harvard University Press. Debates address authorial collaboration exemplified by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, attribution studies using computational techniques promoted by scholars at King's College London and Columbia University, and performance theory dialogues from Richard Schechner and Erving Goffman.