Sarah Ruhl: Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write (Part 1)
[This is the first in a series of Sarah Ruhl's essaylets on theatre that DEVICE is publishing this fall.]
1. On Titles — Comedy and Tragedy
Tragedy is most often named for the tragic person; whereas the comedy appears to be named with nouns or phrases from the world at large. For example: Romeo and Juliet. As opposed to: As you Like it. Or take: Titus Andronicus versus A Midsummer’s Night Dream. (In my own work Eurydice for a tragedy and The Clean House for something more absurd.). Nouns signify the world and the structure of the world over and above the individual. Is this because tragedies are about the loss of one individual soul? The tragic perspective privileges one person over the continuity of the system, the structure, the life force, whereas comedies (which often end in marriages) are named with phrases, linguistic structures, which signify the description of a life structure, going on, on and on, after the play.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Dear Sarah Ruhl,
Regarding your thoughts about Comedy versus Tragedy titles correlating with things (”nouns or phrases”) and names (”tragic person”); my obsevation is that comedy (a joke) that makes one laugh is an attack that has missed its mark. As long as the tragedy happens to someone else, we remain secure, although weary. Comedy, if personified cannot be an attack, unless it is infantile (We will laugh at a baby smacking its mother but it is the action that is funny not the baby.) “The Three Stooges” may be a comedy act but they and each is a tragic figure. I can imagine a great comedy entitled “Victor Borge” but, I suspect, by the time it goes into production the investors will have changed its name to “A Night of Comedy with Victor Borge.”