Traditional Distinctions: Comedy versus Tragedy
| elements | tragedy | comedy |
| reader response | strong emotions: pity and fear | lighthearted: laughter |
| reader distance | attraction aversion: close enough to feel pity but wanting to escape from fear, terror | ironic or comic distance, we cannot be too close or sympathize too much with the "victim" of a comedy |
| reader focus | on an individual, we are inside the hero's head, emotions, dilemma; often sense the entire play is about this individual | on a collective, on a group of people therefore not a strong concern about a single individual, more on relationships between people than the inner life of a single character |
| plot | unified,strong sense of coherence and cohesion of events, serious, 24 hours, imitation(mimesis) of reality but with a "beginning, middle and end"; sense of individual quest, typical plot is a character against fate or destiny as determined either by the gods or society, often a double-bind situation where no positive result is possible | incongruity, wit, humour, repetition, exaggeration, error; accidents surprising, ridiculouos series of events; most typical plot of comedy is a young couple being blocked from each other by someone older |
| character | hero is a superior character, or what Frye calls high mimetic; important role in society, but also displays personal characteristics like courage, strength, determination, desire for truth, capacities for leadership or self expression | characters tend to be like us or below us, low mimetic or ironic in Frye's terms; inferior characters means that we do not take their destinies or behaviour too seriously |
| themes and issues | most serious themes and abstract issues: future of the state, death of a king, taboos like incest and patricide/regicide; tied to gods, religion, justice, honour; transcendence and fate, existentialism, the meaning of life and the ultimate truth of our existence | bawdy and body themes; body parts and body functions are at issue, sex and cuckoldry are common themes |
| language and imagery | language is of the highest level and tone to correspond to the most serious of themes and issue abstract issues: religion, the gods, honour, truth, justice, and seriousness of tone, regicide, incest, matricide, the future of the state | language is expected to be of a lower register and we expect to hear about body parts and body functions therefore vulgar, vernacular, and colloquial |
| ending | ends in death, disaster, destruction of the central character and others; Frye observes that tragedy ends with the hero separated or alienated from his society--if he survives | a happy ending, or at least one in which people get what they deserve (as in "poetic justice"; Frye observes that in comedy the characters end up being brought closer to and into line with their society. |
