The tragicomédie is a dramatic style of Jeu or theatrical writing alternating or mixing various theatrical kinds. Comic, tragic, joke, melodrama or other can there côtoyer.

The term appeared in France at the Dramaturge Robert Garnier in XVIe century, spelled tragecomedie . Among traditional French (Molière, Crow, Root) it is made use of feature-of union: tragi-comedy , to indicate a tragic history with the happy outcome. The beginning of the XVIIe century will put at the mode this type of theater, because the style is not yet clearly defined. Gradually, however, the authors will fold their parts with the rules of propriety.

The mixture of the kinds however was represented little in the French theater, at most finds one parts or the kinds are alternated without mixing. Victor Hugo however tries to impose with its romantic theater a writing between sublimates and grotesque , but it will be necessary to await the XXe century and the Theater of the absurd so that the public agrees to conceive that the laughter does not harm the dramatic depth obligatorily.

Crow, Cid