Tragedy (n.) and vaudeville divide a broken engagement: the village belle who stays true to herself advances from idyl to tragedy; his Excellency who smooths it over settles down in vaudeville.
Tragedy (n.) separates its lovers of legend from without — Petrarch, Abelard, Romeo, Axel; take away the impediments, and they would have been the happiest of lovers.
Tragedy (n.) leans on history — the hero must have done great deeds — while comedy needs no historical support: a fool will laugh at nothing; or is it that light-armed comedy skips past the ethical, while heavy-armed tragedy stays mired in the hero's destruction?
Tragedy (n.) has a deeper collision the more sympathetic and homogeneous the colliding forces — love against love, not love against villainy.
Tragedy (n.) is blind, like a marble statue lacking the power of the eye; modern drama has given up fate and sees with its own eyes.
Tragedy (n.) at its saddest is a man passing through life without discovering that he needed God.