The Christian comedy

I gave my son the lowdown on Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre on the drive to the theater.

In spite of the ponderous Greek name it's called a "comedy," not a "tragedy." Of course "comedy," for the Bard, is not Lucille Ball stuffing chocolates into her maw on a runaway assembly line; it just means the stage isn't covered with dead bodies at the end of Act V. My son was disappointed when I told him. He wanted to see the bodies.

Okay, this is interesting, I thought. Which do you think is more realistic as an ending to all stories --- comedy or tragedy? "Tragedy," came back the 18-year-old, without hesitation. (The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.) There were a still a few minutes to kill before curtain time, so I probed.

I mustered all I know about Shakespeare and all I know about life. The English playwright's final scenes seem to break between weddings and murder-suicides. Much Ado About Nothing: double-wedding. A Midsummer Night's Dream: triple wedding. Twelfth Night: lovers pairing. King Lear: Edmund, Gloucester, Cordelia, Lear, all dead. Macbeth: Lady and King Macbeth, dead. Othello: murder-suicide. Julius Caesar: Caesar, Cassius, Brutus, dead. Antony and Cleopatra: two suicides. Romeo and Juliet: two suicides, lots of road kill. Hamlet: just about all dead except the prince of Norway.

But, you know, whether you vote "comedy" or "tragedy" as more in line with ultimate reality depends on how long a view you take. No one gets out of this place alive, it's true. But if you peek to the end of the novel, I notice it's a wedding feast (Revelation).