sentences:  Burnell in his introduction to the printed edition of the play attacked his critics for their ignorance, pointing out that as they should know perfectly well, many plays are neither tragedy nor comedy, but "something between".The more subtle criticism that developed after the Renaissance stressed the thematic and formal aspects of tragicomedy, rather than plot.Gotthold Ephraim Lessing defined it as a mixture of emotions in which "seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure."