The genre of drama in which the principal action is an unfolding catastrophe. According to Aristotle the audience then feels pity and fear, and this has a cathartic effect with value of its own. In his essay ‘On Tragedy’, David Hume pondered the fact that were the events of a tragedy to unfold in real life they would be most unpleasant to us, yet we derive pleasure from their dramatic representation. His solution is not that we do not ‘really’ feel the pity and terror, thinking that after all it is only a fiction, but that we do, yet at the same time admire the form of the presentation, and this admiration accounts for our pleasure.