George Bernard Shaw said of Ibsen's work that it established tragicomedy as a more meaningful and serious entertainment than tragedy.

Who invented the tragicomedy?

The Roman playwright Plautus is usually credited with coining the term in his play Amphitryon, when the character Mercury says, of a play-within-a-play featuring both gods and servants, "I will make it a mixture: let it be a tragicomedy."

Why was tragedy created?

Tragedies were first performed as religious rituals and to honor the gods and goddesses. A lot of what it did was explain the relation between the human and the divine, explain the relation between the human world and the material world, and explained violence and its origins.