Mixture of tragedy and comedy :
Dryden in his An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) defends the genre of tragic-comedy on the ground that the admixture of comic and tragic elements rather consolidates than degrading the totality of human nature. Since human life comprises both passion and humor, a play should incorporate both. Mirth does not destroy compassion because two contrary emotions set off each other. It acts as a tragic relief, refreshing the audience deeply burdened by the gravity and its function is similar to the music played between two acts. Just as the eye can pass from an unpleasant object to a pleasant one, so also the soul can move from tragic to the comic, for the soul is swifter than sense. The demand of the modern English stage is different from Classical Greek stage because with change in time and space, taste also alters. To limit an artistic form to a fixed period and emphasizing on rules by ignoring the aesthetic spirit is downright unjust. Had Aristotle seen the English place “he might have changed his mind”.
Dryden thus advocates the mixture of the tragic and the comic on the ground of dramatic aesthetics and artfulness as well as on the issue of mirroring the true state of life : life as a whole instead of any highlighted fragment. Like an epic, Dryden wants the dramatic genre also to show both the sides of the coin : both the mirth and the gloom.
Thus, English playwrights successfully combined the tragic and comic to create a new style of writing appropriate for current taste and time.
