If it is true that every historical era gives rise to the aesthetic sensibility most perfectly calibrated to its moral and spiritual essence, one wonders what truth is revealed by the fact that all of a sudden, the tragicomic is back. This cockroach of forms—adaptive, resilient, unkillable—was named by the Roman dramatist Plautus in the second century BC, enjoyed its heyday in 17th-century Renaiss...