Some of the earliest traces of tragedy and comedy can be traced back to Greek festivals honoring their gods. Among all the gods, Dionysus was honored with a festival called City Dionysia. This festival took place in Athens, which was at the time a preeminent center of theatrical performances. The dithyramb, an ancient Greek hymn, was sung in honor of this god. In fact, tragedy and comedy are almost one and the same. John Morreall of the State University of New York wrote, “the great playwrights wrote both tragedies and comedies” (Morreall 3). While this statement is entirely valid, there is much more to the origins of comedy and tragedy than meets the eye. Comedy and tragedy, although once the same, eventually began to drift apart as the differences between them grew stronger. As this culture developed and moved through the Shakespearean era, tragedy and comedy evolved into what they are today. Early Greek tragedies were designed to be performed before an audience in a theater and were never really intended to be written as novels. . In fact, the origins of comedy and tragedy can be traced back to the three great tragedians: Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. These three greats wrote some of the best pieces of all time. Each generation reinvented the same myths from a different perspective and that somehow kept the myths alive because they seemed more valid. For example, Sophocles was a “definitive innovator in theater, he added a third actor – thereby greatly increasing the dramatic possibilities of the medium – increased the size of the chorus, abandoned the trilogy of plays for self-contained tragedy and introduced scene painting” (Columbia EE 1). The Greeks divided their theater into three genres: tragedies, comedies...... middle of paper ... which deal with emotional disengagement and other social differences. In the end, they are two quite different genres. The three great tragedians of Greek culture, and later Shakespeare, in the Elizabethan era, prove that comedy and tragedy separated and developed dramatically over the centuries. Comedy, tragedy and religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. Academic Electronic Book Collection (EBSCOhost). Internet. February 21, 2014.WALLACE, JENNIFER. “Tragedy and laughter”. Comparative Drama 47.2 (2013): 201-224. Premier Academic Research. Internet. March 3, 2014. Morreall, John. “ComedyTragedyFeatures.” ComedyTragedyFeatures. Albany State University of New York, January 29, 2002. Web. March 3, 2014. “Sophocles.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition (2013): 1. Literary Reference Center. Internet. March 3. 2014.