Exploring Dramatic Subgenres: Tragedy, Comedy, and Drama
Dramatic Subgenres: An Overview
The Passive Voice
The passive voice is formed with the verb “to be,” acting as an auxiliary, and the past participle of the verb being conjugated.
Nonpersonal Forms
Nonpersonal forms lack person and number and include the infinitive mood. They also include the gerund and the participle, which function as a noun, an adverb, and an adjective, respectively.
Major Dramatic Subgenres
Dramatic subgenres are classified into two categories: major (tragedy, comedy, and drama) and minor (appetizer, farce, etc.).
Tragedy
Tragedy presents a conflict with no easy solutions. The characters are driven by fate or other passions, facing each other until they are destroyed. This evokes fear in the viewer.
Ancient Tragedy
Ancient tragedy originated in Greece during celebrations honoring Dionysus. Peasants sang hymns, which eventually incorporated dialogues. A goat was sacrificed, and the author Sophocles, disguised in its skin, was a prominent figure. One of his most important works is Antigone.
Modern and Contemporary Tragedy
In 16th-century English comedy, William Shakespeare, an actor and playwright, wrote Romeo and Juliet (a story of impossible love between two rival families) and Hamlet (a play about doubt). 20th-century cultivators in Spain: Federico Garcia Lorca wrote poetry and plays, his characters are always women who fight against customs and norms that prevent them from being happy (The House of Bernarda Alba). Brenda Marshall is the most prominent Spanish dramatist of the twentieth century, his characters seek freedom and justice, but do not find it (History of a Staircase).
Comedy
Comedy is a play that aims to entertain, drawing its plot and characters from everyday life and featuring a happy ending. The most famous playwright of ancient Roman comedy was Plautus.
Modern and Contemporary Comedy
The creator of French comedy was Molière, who wrote Tartuffe, criticizing Spanish hypocrisy. Fernández Moratín wrote The Maiden’s Consent, which defends the right of girls to choose their husbands. Two Spanish comedies of the twentieth century are Jacinto Benavente’s The Bonds of Interest, which criticizes the passion for money, and Miguel Mihura’s Three Top Hats, which presents disparate situations and dialogues between a couple who give up their love the same night they met.
Drama
Drama is a genre somewhere between tragedy and comedy. The characters can belong to higher classes or to the common people. The action usually ends in catastrophe and admits both refined and popular language. A key work of Spanish drama is La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas, which tells the unfortunate love story between two young people. In the seventeenth century, Lope de Vega gave final shape to this particular genre of honor dramas (Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña: a rich farmer kills the commander who attempted to abuse his wife; Fuente Obejuna: all the people lynched the commander for the outrages that women echo). Pedro Calderón de la Barca followed in the footsteps of Lope de Vega in El Alcalde de Zalamea, where the mayor of a town executes a captain for having kidnapped his daughter.
Romantic Drama
Two religious dramas stand out: Faust by the German Wolfgang Goethe, the story of an old man who sells his soul to the devil to regain his youth, and Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla, a gallant story of an unbeliever, a challenger, and a conqueror of men and women, who is saved by the spirit of the girl he loves just before he dies.