/lit/ - Literature

All of Shakespeare's works are considered tragedies because it was a tragedy that he ever wrote them.

>>932092

>>932092
damn son

>>932098
holy fuck I'm taking that to /ck/ thanks!!

>>932092
>Has not read Cymbeline.
>Has not read any Shakespeare - save some lines in school.
>Takes narcissistic opinions to /lit/ to feel important and smart.

self-bump because every publisher thinks this play is a tragedy; somebody must know why!

does anyone die?

I haven't read Cymbeline and silly as it might sound I don't want to 'spoil' it for myself by looking it up. However...

Shakespeare did not as far as we know name his plays 'Comedies' or 'Tragedies'. The label of Comedy, Tragedy, or History is imposed only by Heminges and Condell, two actors of Shakespeare's old company and the executors of his literary estate - the vectors of his posterity. They may have mis-classified plays or classified them inaccurately for convenience. Certainly there's evidence that they were sometimes performed as other genres - an earlier publication of King Lear lists it as a History and not a Tragedy.

Their scheme may even have been a pragmatic response to a publicity problem. In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, rival Ben Jonson published his plays as 'Works'. At that time plays were not considered worthy of the high literary merit and serious respect that 'Works' implied, and Jonson was mocked for it. Heminges and Condell didn't want to make Shakespeare appear pretentious or up himself (Ben Jonson was kind of an asshole) so 'Works' was out.

But at the same time, Shakespeare's plays are really something, and Shakespeare himself, in the last decade and a half of his life, is very obviously reaching towards a theatre that is more than ephemeral. So 'Plays' would be underselling him. Perhaps his editors chose 'Tragedies, Comedies and Histories' (or whatever) to avoid this problem.

In any case, tragedy and comedy are only generic labels and sometimes they can mean slightly different things at that time than we expect (comedy certainly does). Even then, Shakespeare had a real penchant for fucking with genres. 'Shakespearian Comedy', for instance, is marked (among other things) for always leaving at least one character alone and locked out of the magic circle of its harmonious ending. He certainly didn't always play by the rules of his day - something that pissed off Jonson the obnoxious classicist. See 'Measure for Measure' or 'The Merchant of Venice' for comedies that don't quite seem to end that well, or 'Anthony and Cleopatra' for a tragedy that ends kind of like a comedy, with the protagonists married in glorious, famous death, and the golden reign of Augustus Caesar about to begin.

>>932224
>>932231
yeah a lot of shakespeare's plays don't actually fit the comedy / tragedy rubric at all, and cymbeline is one of these

>>932219
No. There's a war, and none of the main character dies. One character tries to die, but he doesn't. This is after said character orders his lover to be killed - but she is not killed.

>>932236
Thanks. I didn't know that. I guess I'm still a bit perplexed, though, becuase there is NOTHING tragic about this, and yet any book I see labeled "Shakespeare's tragedies" has this in the contents.

>>932245
Basically, if it's not a comedy, it's a tragedy.
Fuck histories.

>>932252
That seems to make sense.

>>932224
This guy's got it right. Heminges and Condell called it a tragedy back in 1623 when they published the First Folio, and everyone since then has been copying them.