What King Lear Taught Me

I've been doing some thinking about my EN1101E lessons on King Lear last semester.
One thing that I managed to catch was about tragedy and comedy.
The lecturer once had a student who gave a wonderful definition regarding these two words:
A tragedy is a lack of comedy, and a comedy is the absence of tragedy.
For example, if, at the end, Cordelia did managed to survive and her breath moved the feather under her nose, then the tragedy will be turned into a comedy immediately by that one little scene. Lear would not have died of a broken heart, everything would eventually turn out okay.
However, it did not happen, and hence the lack of a comedy, the chance of making everything okay, was not present. Therefore, King Lear is a tragedy.

I think this is a perfect explanation as to why I hate some works immensely.
There are many stories and movies etc that could've been a comedy, but the author had to make it into a tragedy, refusing to give a happy outcome instead of a sad one.
Just a few drops of ink and a much beloved character of mine would have had a change of fate and stay alive for once.
It could have been a comedy. It could have turned out okay. It was so close.
I guess it is the "so close" part that irks me most of the time. More often than not, the tragic twist is not essential, it would not make the work into a better story, it was there for the sake of being there, to end a sub-character conveniently.
Why is it that sub-characters have to suffer such fate, even if they, to me, is as good, as real and perhaps even more interesting than the main characters?
Well, why did Jiraiya had to die?
Why did Ace had to die?
Why did Hughes had to die?
Why, for God's sake, did 段正淳 and all his lovers had to die?
If they have to die, why can't they resurrect like Gandalf?
An author is like God. They control the fates of their characters and sometimes they mercilessly refuse to choose comedy over tragedy.
Hold this idea, bring it to real life, and even though I still hate it when such things happen, I will try to accept it nevertheless.
Because you just can't reason with fate.
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The second thing I brought back from the lesson is much simpler.
The lecturer said that there was once a student who pointed out that Cordelia and the Fool was never in the same scene, and went on to think about many hidden message by Shakespeare regarding this point.
However, the lecturer had an answer to this question, and it was painfully simple.
In the Victorian theatres where Shakespearean works were first played out, the actors had to take up more than one characters sometimes.
In King Lear, it so happens that the actor playing Cordelia was the same guy playing the Fool, and hence, they could not be in the same scene.
Sometimes, we tend to be overly smart and think far too much.
Sometimes, the answer is painfully simple.