Tragicomedy Tanya Pollard Chapter 18, The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Vol. 2: 1558-1660, ed. Patrick Cheney and Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 419-432. Author’s pre-copyedited file: for full publication details, see https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-history-of-classical-reception-in-english- literature-9780199547555?cc=us&lang=en& Is tragicomedy a classical genre? Most English Renaissance critics suggested that it lacked the dignity, unity, and ancient authority implied by the term. Famously, Philip Sidney’s complaints about his contemporaries’ unhappy distance from classical theater focused on ‘their mongrel tragi-comedy,’ which he described as ‘mingling kings and clowns... with neither decency nor discretion’ 1 and George Whetstone similarly fretted over the ‘gross indecorum’ of his peers who ‘to make mirth... make a clown companion with a king.’ 2 Although more recent critics have tended to reverse these aesthetic judgments, typically celebrating tragicomedy for its unconventional hybridity, for the most part they have similarly seen the genre as new and iconoclastic, representing a daring break from classical precedent. Yet the development of tragicomedy in the sixteenth century was firmly rooted in engagement with classical texts. The authority conferred by classical precedents was crucial to establishing the genre’s legitimacy and success, but they provided more than simply justification. Perhaps surprisingly, they also offered specific structural models for the conventions that made tragicomedy so popular with audiences. Even when playwrights diverged from their theoretical and practical models, tragicomic plays evolved in intimate relationship to the classical dramatic genres from which they drew their name. The curious status of tragicomedy requires us to consider more closely what it means to be a classical genre. To critics writing on this period, the term classical is typically allied with