The Merchant of Venice as a

Tragi-Comedy

Md Jahidul Azad
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Prime University
• Traditionally Shakespeare play
types are categorised as
Comedy, History and Tragedy,
with some additional categories
proposed over the years –
including ‘tragicomedy’.
• A tragicomedy is a play that is neither a
comedy nor a tragedy, although it has the
features of both. Tragedies are usually
focused almost exclusively on the central
character, the tragic hero
(although Shakespearean tragedies can
sometimes be a double tragedy, with two
tragic heroes, like Romeo and Juliet). The
audience has insights into his mind and
goes deeply in, as with Macbeth or Hamlet.
• Comedy plays, on the other hand,
remove that focus whilst the concerns
are diversified so that the action is
made up of the stories of several
characters, particularly pairs of lovers.
The shadows in human emotions are
usually minor in the comedies: they
are such things as misunderstandings,
playful deceptions and so on.
• Conversely, a tragedy has an
unhappy ending, and usually
involves the downfall of the
main character.
• Whilst plays that fall between these
two stools of tragedy and comedy
are generally referred to as
Shakespeare’s tragedies, they are
sometimes referred to as ‘Problem
plays’, making the whole area of play
classification something of a grey
area.
• Shakespeare’s plays generally accepted
as tragicomedy plays are:
• Cymbeline
• The Merchant of Venice
• The Winter’s Tale
• Let's look at The Merchant of Venice in
this context. In many ways, the play has a
happy ending: Bassanio ends up
with Portia, and Antonio not only
escapes his gruesome fate, but also finds
out that he is, in fact, still rich. By all
accounts, that's a classic comedic ending:
guy gets the girl, nobody is poor, and
everyone's having a good time. 
• However, the play subtly disrupts this
comedic ending through its
treatment of Shylock; though he is
ostensibly the "villain" of the play,
the reader/audience tends to
sympathize with Shylock, as he faces
significant persecution through the
story, simply because he is Jewish. 
• As such, his downfall is not positive at
all, but instead takes on tragic
proportions (he doesn't even appear
on-stage during the final act). The
play's comedic ending is subverted by
the tragic downfall of Shylock, and this
is one of the main reasons why The
Merchant of Venice continues to be
read and studied. 
• The Merchant of Venice can be seen as a
tragicomedy. It has a comic structure but
one of the central characters, Shylock,
looks very much like a tragic character.
The play has a comedy ending with the
lovers pairing off but we are left with
taste in the mouth of the ordeal of
Shylock, destroyed by a combination of
his own faults and the persecution of the
lovers who enjoy that happy ending. 
• The feeling at the end of the play
is neither joy nor misery. The play
has a decidedly comic structure
but there is also a powerful tragic
story. It can, therefore, be called
a tragicomedy.
• Shakespeare’ tragicomedies usually have
improbable and complex plots;
characters of high social class; contrasts
between villainy and virtue; love of
different kinds at their centre; a hero
who is saved at the last minute after a
touch-and- go experience; surprises and
treachery. The Winter’s
Tale and Cymbeline are two plays that fit
that tragicomical pattern.
Thank you