Tragedy or Comedy: The End Matters

When we think of the word com­e­dy we equate it with humor and laugh­ter. We pop in a comedic film and antic­i­pate the chuck­ling to fol­low. Shake­speare pro­pelled the roman­tic com­e­dy, which mod­els we still use today in our films. Falling into scrape after scrape, mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­fu­sion that cause us to chor­tle, the gent and lady final­ly end up in wed­ded bliss.

Con­trast all of that with tragedy. Evok­ing feel­ings of sad­ness and pain, this word is syn­ony­mous with heartache and dev­as­ta­tion. Most art of this kind uses calami­ty and afflic­tion to teach us deep­er lessons in life. Our favorite Bard also cre­at­ed many of these plays.

Why then does Dante title his most famous work The Divine Com­e­dy? To our mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties it veers clos­er to the tragedy. It’s not at all fun­ny. The prop­er cat­e­go­riza­tion of a work lies in its end­ing. Will it end in death or mar­riage? That is what makes the dif­fer­ence. All of Shakespeare’s come­dies end in a great big wed­ding or wed­ding feast. The tragedies end in the death of many, some­times almost all of the characters.

We can learn some­thing of this in our own life. Ask your­self: how will the sto­ry of my life end? What paths am I on now that will lead to a nar­ra­tive of com­e­dy rather than a tragedy? After my final breath will face eter­nal death and destruc­tion in hell, or a cel­e­bra­tion of the great mar­riage feast of the Lamb, with the most glo­ri­ous Bride­groom, Jesus Christ? The end matters.

This past fall we walked through Shakespeare’s com­e­dy As You Like It. Chang­ing gears for the win­ter, we will ven­ture into a pop­u­lar favorite of his tragedies, King Lear. Join me on Tues­days start­ing Jan­u­ary 8, 2019 at 4:30 to explore the themes of jeal­ousy, greed, flat­tery and pride. It may help you to a good end!