Name and Nature of Tragicomedy

Verna A. Foster is an associate professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches courses in modern drama, Shakespeare, and dramatic theory. She has published numerous essays on early modern and modern drama.

'Foster is [...] illuminating in her comments about style... an intriguing account of tragicomedy's emergence, its revival and its dramaturgical importance.' Early Modern Literary Studies 'Such a study, surely reflecting wide personal experience apparently acquired through extensive playgoing as well as teaching and research, is in many ways a welcome addition in an age of intense specialization... Foster engages the dynamics of audience response in nuanced and generating ways, as she demonstrates important family resemblances between Renaissance and modern tragicomedy: the central contribution of this book, and an important one.' Comparative Drama

• Contents: Preface; Introduction; The name of tragicomedy: problems of identity; Early English tragicomedy: from providential design to metatheatre; Shakespearean tragicomedy: Measure for Measure: the Duke's problem play versus Shakespeare's tragicomedy; The Winter's Tale: tragicomedy of wonder; The tragicomedy of sexuality and surprise: Beaumont and Fletcher and Massinger; Sexuality and tragicomic genre in the plays of Fletcher; The moral tragicomedy of Massinger; Tragicomedy in transition; Modern tragicomedy I: tragicomedy and realism: Ibsen: The Wild Duck; Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard; Synge: The Playboy of the Western World; O'Casey: Juno and the Paycock; Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire; Modern tragicomedy II: metatheatre and the absurd: Beckett: Waiting for Godot; Ionesco: The Chairs and The Killer; Pinter: The Caretaker and No Man's Land; Conclusion: the nature of tragicomedy; Select bibliography; Index.