comedy

comedy, a stage play of a light and amusing character with a happy conclusion to its plot [OED]. In Greece it originated in the festivals of Dionysus, celebrated with song and merriment at the vintage; the Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence was imitated, with some native elements, from the Greek comedy of Menander and other dramatists of his period. Latin comedy continued to exercise an influence throughout the Middle Ages, particularly on the ‘Saints Plays’ which were often written to celebrate some merry saint and were largely comic with a concluding serious scene. The miracle plays of the later Middle Ages were also conducive to comedy rather than to tragedy, and as with the morality Plays were most independent in their comic parts, which were often separated from the main theme of the play. In Morality Plays the gradual rise of a humorous element is noticeable and the Vice in particular came to be recognized as a stock comic character.

With the recovery in the 15th cent. of twelve lost plays of Plautus and a renewed study of Terence, comedies on classical models came to be written. The plays of John Heywood and Rastell retain more of the elements of the Morality, but Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (perf. c.1552) and Gammer Gurtons Nedle (acted 1566) are clearly based on classical models. These two plays are the first recognizable examples of modern English comedy. Throughout the 16th cent. this type of college or university play became gradually more popular, while the Morality passed out of fashion. Elizabethan comedy was lightened by a romantic element, as exemplified by Lyly and Greene, drawn from Italian and French romances. Lyly in particular explored the possibilities of prose dialogue and Greene showed great skill in his blending of plot and sub-plot. Shakespeare's comedies, which were nearly all written before 1600, owed much to these two predecessors. His comedies make no great attempt at moralizing or satirizing: their main essentials are a delightful story, in some romantic setting, arriving at a fortunate issue. The comedies of Ben Jonson, which are written almost entirely in prose, have a definite moral and satirical vein running through them, but Beaumont and Fletcher preserved the more romantic and less realistic tradition.

With the revival of drama after the Restoration, the influence of French comedy, and particularly of Molière, was predominant, while Jonson was regarded as the greatest English model. The characteristics of Restoration comedy, as exemplified in the plays of Wycherley, Etherege, Dryden, etc., are wit—rather than humour—and a great measure of licentiousness, but at the same time considerable polish and elegance. Prose was by this time recognized as the natural vehicle for comedy. The Restoration comedy reached its greatest heights in the works of Congreve at the end of the century, while Vanbrugh and Farquhar continued the same tradition, though with less wit and originality. After these, Steele, deprecating the immoral tone of contemporary plays, popularized what is known as the ‘sentimental comedy’. In such plays as his The Conscious Lovers (1722), the rewards attendant on virtuous behaviour are stressed and vices such as drinking and duelling are condemned. This type of play came to be dominant throughout the 18th cent. Steele and his followers had no doubt a salutary influence on the morals of their generation, but their plays on the whole lacked realism and dramatic intensity. Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and Sheridan in The School for Scandal (1777) and The Critic (1779) deliberately and successfully recaptured the best features of Restoration comedy. Their plays were successful, but they found no followers of any distinction and, in general, few comedies of the 18th and 19th cent. have any place in literary history. Examples from the end of the 19th cent. include Wilde's The Importance of being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, and A Woman of No Importance, the lighter plays of Shaw (You Never Can Tell), and the better plays of Pinero.

The 20th cent. saw various developments in comedy, including the Theatre of the Absurd, the drawing-room comedies of Coward and Rattigan, and the reaction against these in the kitchen sink school, and the black comedies of Orton, Pinter, Beckett, and others. (See also sentimental comedy.)