We learn more from tragedy than we do from comedy.

There are two main types of text, which are comedy and tragedy. Both of these can give a cathartic feeling to the reader, but I think a tragedy gives a stronger one as, normally, the protagonist dies which makes us pity them. I will analyse the lessons we learn from Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If we reflect on their story, we can see that Macbeth discusses many dark themes which can make reader’s think it is a tragedy: that is absolutely correct. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on the contrary, is a joyful and, at times, funny play which leads to it being a comedy. Let us now think what many things we learn from Macbeth: we can learn that you are the only one able to take responsibility for your own action. Macbeth goes to war, and he succeeds in defeating opposition. After that, he meets 3 witches who tell him he will be king of Scotland. Wanting to already become king, the fact that Macbeth’s wife encouraged him to kill the king did not help. Macbeth took a knife to try to kill the king though he may have had a choice to kill the king or not. At the end, Macbeth gets killed by Macduff who becomes King of the Scotland. We also learn to beware of who you trust as King Duncan gets killed by a man he trusted. We also learn about greed and power. On the other hand, A midsummer night’s dream can teach us that sometimes, it is better to let things be and not intervene certain matters. The part which tells us about this is when Oberon, the fairy king, tries to fix the fight between the lovers but instead he messes it up even more. Also, we can learn that it is important to think about things from the other person’s view. The part which shows this is when Oberon wants to turn Titania into loving Nick Bottom. Oberon should think about why Titania wants the Indian boy and vice versa though they should also ask the boy himself because they are treating him like a non-living item. Catharsis is a term coined by Aristotle after the Greek word to purge and it is when the reader or audience of a piece of literature or play feels what the protagonist is feeling. In Othello by Shakespeare, a malicious soldier called Lago, makes it look like Othello’s wife cheated on him even though it wasn’t true. Out of rage Othello killed his wife but he later on discovers that his wife was faithful, and he takes his life. We pity the protagonist Othello as he kills himself out of guilt of killing his wife. I think that we learn more from tragedy as in comedy, everything ends well and, usually, no-one dies so we can’t take in a moral message as well as nothing bad happens to the villains or to anyone at all.