Drama and Society

Abstract

It seems that tragedy is a kind of social sin. The average spectator considers the writer of tragedies, in the best cases, as a sort of sinister mar-joy worthy of criminal persecution, social ostracism and the most rigorous repression by the censors. It seems we are opposed to the voices of sorrow, death and catastrophe on the stage. Theatre managers illustrate this evident antipathy for the tragic genre by programming silly light comedies, and musical reviews whose artistic pretensions go no further than an exhibition of nude bodies, and saucy facility of situation, puns and jokes.