This essay examines the critical receptions and stage adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of genre, and investigates the hybridization of tragedy and comedy in relation to Neo-Classical and Deconstruction decrees. Shakespeare’s mingling of genres satisfies the audience’s need for variety and the integrated verisimilitude of human life and emotions. Yet, for Neo-Classicists, comedy and tragedy constituted a dichotomy of binary alternatives, denying any intermixture of the pathetic and the hilarious. Subverting this Neo-Classical dramatic convention, the hybridism of Shakespeare’s generic experimentation, while facilitating Shakespeare to broaden his theatrical horizon, has caused critical debates throughout the centuries. Most significantly, Samuel Johnson’s commentaries on Shakespeare’s generic exploitation shared with modern theories concerning genres as dynamic, interactive, and historically defined. This reception study argues that factors shaping the debates include the multifarious interrelation of genres, which make it impossible to offer a binary distinction between the comic and the tragic.