How could you tell if a Shakespeare play was a Comedy or Tragedy?

Answer 1

The simple (but holey) answer is: comedies aim to make you laugh, while tragedies aim to make you cry... that's the general rule anyway.

Another clue that Shakespeare gives you is that while tragedies end in death of the protagonist (and usually a bunch of other people), comedies often end in a marriage (again, sometimes a bunch of them).

So what about Romeo and Juliet? That ends with a marriage and a whole lot of death... hmmm. Well, Romeo and Juliet - while certainly tragic - is what you could perhaps call a tragi-comedy... a kind of hybrid of the two. Mercutio has some very funny lines, and Romeo's cluelessness is pretty comical - but ultimately the play is undoubtedly tragic so a lot of people would say there's not enough humour to really make it a tragi-comedy and would just call it a tragedy (that's what the publishers decided in the first printed version by the way).

Shkspr realised that a combination of tragedy and comedy could be effective, even when the play was a classic T or C and not a tragi-comedy, Romance or History... so in the terrible tragedy of King Lear there are some very funny scenes and lines (check out the fool's lines - there's both humour and strong emotion there); whereas in Much ado about nothing there are certain scenes that make you think things are going to end up tragically (the wedding scene, or Benedick's challenge of Claudio) while overall the play is definitely comedic.

Anyway - you now have the short version and the... less... short version. There's a long version too if you're really keen (involving narrative structure and ancient Greek laxatives), but I think you get the gist.