ABSTRACT
Comedies expressed the sense of resolution and release achieved in the tragic compromise. With conflicts and tensions reduced, there could be a season of laughter, playfulness, and good cheer. Nonsense, foolishness, and lighthearted banter were appropriate to the resolution achieved. The agony of the agon was replaced by a festival atmosphere. In Greek tragedy the purpose of the tragic drama was to work through the tragic agon and, if possible, wrest from it something of lasting value. At the minimum, this association of comedy with tragedy, whether in ancient Greece or in medieval to modem Japan, has provided a comic release from the tension and weightiness of the tragic drama. The comic vision protests against all finite claims to the infinite. Comedy also insists that the tragic spirit has to work through so much suffering and woe because it has abandoned the comic spirit in the first place.
