Tragic king cut short in meadow (3)
I believe the answer is:
lea
'meadow' is the definition.
(a lea is a grassy area)
'tragic king cut short' is the wordplay.
'tragic king' becomes 'Lear' (Shakespeare's King Lear).
'cut short' means to remove the last letter.
'lear' with its final letter removed is 'LEA'.
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for lea that I've seen before include "River flowing through London" , "grazing area" , "authority for teachers" , "Grazing land" , "Poetically, a piece of meadow or pasture" .)