SOURCE: “Of Tragedy and Comedy,” in Israel Zangwill, Columbia University Press, 1964, pp. 71–91.

In the following essay from his book-length study of Zangwill, Wohlgelernter explores tragedy and comedy as complementary aspects of Jewish ghetto life in such short story collections as Ghetto Tragedies, Ghetto Comedies, The Celibates' Club, The Grey Wig, and The King of Schnorrers.

“Over all Zangwill's work, even the King of Schnorrers,” writes the British poet, anthologist, and personal friend of Zangwill, Thomas Moult, “broods tragedy—tragedy in the Greek, the truer sense. It was instinctive in him to feel tragedy pressing everywhere.”¹ This brooding sense of tragedy, added to the comic spirit, reveals itself most clearly in the many short stories and novelettes included in Ghetto Tragedies, Ghetto Comedies, The Celibates' Club, The Grey Wig, as well as the play Too Much Money and the comic tale The King of Schnorrers. To balance these significant...