" In comedy, if fate is to appear comic, it must be arbitrary and appear to behave like a person, and the people who are subject to fate should not be responsible for what occurs. In tragedy fate is not an arbitrary person - it is we who are responsible, and we bring our fate upon ourselves. Where fate plays too large a role, however, the effect is not tragic but pathetic. The effect of Greek tragedy can seem pathetic to us just in this way. The Greeks naively argue that the sign of guilt is misfortune and that therefore if there is misfortune, then there must be guilt. Comic fate is arbitrary and does not involve real suffering - whatever suffering in is presented in comic must be temporary and imaginary. "

― W.H. Auden , Lectures on Shakespeare