In modern terms these divisions are usually seen as prose
narrative, poetry, and drama. However, classifications of genre
are largely arbitrary, based on conventions which give writers a
basic medium to explore and the reader or audience particular
expectations. In Hamlet (ca. 1600), Shakespeare satirizes the
dogmatic genre critics of his time with a list of genres that
shows their confusion: ...tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,
pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral. . . . A distinction is
often made between a genre and a mode. A genre is a form like a
novel, tragedy, comedy, epic, or sonnet. A mode describes the
quality of a part of a larger work; thus a comedy can have
passages that are tragic in mode, and a tragedy can have scenes
that are in a comic mode (modern criticism often substitutes the
more impressive-sounding "comedic," though no-one has yet found
a passage "tragedic.")