Ans 1

There is a sense of detachment that comedy has which tragedy doesn’t. This has been attained through
many ways. For example, everything that the characters say in Oedipus rex is focused on the collective.
They are constantly justifying their actions to the audience. Bergson talks about how life and society
require each one of us to have constant alert attention that discerns the outline of present situation
together with certain elasticity of mind. Characters in tragedy posses that as can be seen with Oedipus
Rex. Whereas characters in comedy do not possess that. “Comic character is generally comic in
proportion to his ignorance of himself as opposed to tragedy.” In the case of A Midsummer Night’s
dream, Bottom is completely unaware of himself whereas Titania is made to be unaware of herself. This
heightens the distance and detachment that audience feels and hence heightens his comic aspect in
their interaction with each other and also to some extent with other people

Oedipus does a lot of things which are impulsive and done hastily. Yet, as audience we are made to
empathize with Oedipus even when he is doing things which are very extreme, because he justifies each
of his actions and there is a certain honor expected of the society that he manages to maintain. Tragedy
could contain Chorus. Most Greek tragedies do but comedies do not have a chorus. The characters may
interact with the audience using aside (the interaction is short) but they never interact with a chorus in
comedy. There is a certain achievement of roundness in the characters of Tragedy, especially the main
character, the way in Oedipus Rex, Oedipus retains a certain roundness as the events progress. On the
other hand, the characters in a comedy are quite flat. In the drama, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we
don’t know much about the characters of Demeitrus, Helena, Lyzander and Hermia, other than the fact
about who likes who. Because for something to act as a social corrector, there needs a certain obvious
arbitrariness to things that are happening which can only be attained by a certain detachment from the
characters. Hence the flatness in comedy. Comic looks at the collective whereas tragedy looks at the
individual, enabling empathy in case of tragedy and a certain distance with the characters in case of
comic. There is a collective way in which laughter is experienced both in the play (when the characters
are watching a play) and in the audience. People from the same social group have a certain shared belief
systems which enables a collective way of making fun. Although in comedy it is not focused on the
collective, in a sense that the collective (audience) is made highly aware of characters situation the way
it is tragedy. Nevertheless, each comic element in a comedy is aimed at a particular social group. In the
case of A Midsummer Night’s dream, each comic element is aimed at a particular class. Both comedy are
tragedy make the audience think, but in different ways. Tragedy makes the audience get into the
character’s shoes and think what they would have done if they were faced with the same choices in life.
Comedy makes them think about the meaninglessness of everything that is happening and makes them
think about an alternate paradigm. As explained by Aristotle, what depicts human greatness in tragedy
depicts human weakness in comedy. Comic is art in a sense that it has to produce actions which are
outside the forces of tension and elasticity which society expects of us. At the same time (as Bergson
explains) by organizing laughter, comedy accepts social life as a natural environment and in this respect
turns its back on art. Therefore, Comic lies between life and art whereas tragedy is just about life. In
fact, tragedy talks about non- arbitrariness of everything that happens in life, like there is a reason to
everything that happens, making it inspiring nevertheless.