“Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless. It has nothing to do with melodrama–with wicked villains, persecuted maidens, avengers, sudden revelations, and eleventh-hour repentances. Death, in a melodrama, is really horrible because it is never inevitable. The dear old father might so easily have been saved; the honest young man might so easily have brought in the police five minutes earlier.
“In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone’s destiny is known. That’s because hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn’t any hope. You’re trapped. The whole sky has fallen on you, and all you can do about it is to shout.
“Don’t mistake me: I said ‘shout’: I did not say groan, whimper, complain. That, you cannot do. But you can shout aloud; you can get all those things said that you never thought you’d be able to say–or never even knew you had it in you to say.”
Jean Anouilh, Antigone (trans. Lewis Galantiere)