Types of Comedy

Name:- Kubavat Kishan

Roll no:- 13

M.A semester no :-1

Paper no :- 2

Year:- 2014-15

Paper name :-The Neo- Classical Literature

Assignment Topic :- Types of Comedy

Submitted to :- Department of English

 M.K.Bhavnagar University

What  is comedy ?

   Comedies have been written since the time immemorial. In Greece Aristophanes wrote tragedies. In England Shakespeare and Ben Jonson drew inspiration from the ancient comedy writers. Comedy can be defined as a drama of entertainment and laughter. It’s purpose is to give relief to the tired minds. The general view has been that comedy provides laughter and laughter serves as a sort of change from the serious preoccupations of life. Many people consider comedy as a sort of inferior art

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    Aristotle has devoted the whole of his “Poetics” to the study of tragedy but he gives only a short paragraph on comedy. According to the Greek philosopher, comedy is the representation of a character of a lower time. By lower, Aristotle does not mean morally bad but only ridiculous. He defines the ridiculous as something ugly that arouses laughter. Bergson in essay “On Laughter” says that laughter of comedy appeals to our intelligence.

     In ordinary conversation the words comedy and comic are used for anything that is funny or laughable. When we speak of a comedy we generally mean a play which has a pleasant atmosphere and happy ending. IT must be amusing much has been written about the philosophy of laughter.

Another theory of laughter suggest that it is an expression of pleasure and thankfulness at our own comparative good luck. To laugh at a fat women is to express our satisfaction in not being ourselves fat. If we laugh at other’s weakness, it is because we ourselves are happy to be free from them.

 Laughter is always not free from cruelty or selfishness. Sometimes we laugh a  somebody and sometimes we laugh with somebody. The real great characters in literature make us laugh with them. The real great characters in literature make us laugh with them. Cervantes Don Quixote, Shakespeare’s falstaf, Dickens Mr.pickwick are loveable characters with whom we enjoy laughter. In short we can summarise the following characteristics of comedy …….

Ø  Comedy is a play which arouses laughter. Its primary purpose is to amuse and entertain.

Ø  It provides relaxation relief to our tired minds. Laughter is necessary for human health.

Ø  We laugh at the oddities and eccentricities of others. It gives us a sort of relief that we are free of such oddities.

Ø  A pure comedy has no other purpose except to amuse . There is a pure entertainment. In such plays we do not laugh at other characters but we laugh with them.

Ø  Sometimes comedy and satire are closely related. Its purpose may be corrective or satirical. It exposes the follies and weakness of society or people.

Ø  In nutshell a comedy has a pleasant atmosphere. It ends happily. There is a general atmosphere of laughter and pleasure . though Aristotle and other Greeks regarded it as as inferior art, it is an important genre of our literature.

Now we are discuss about types of comedy .

1) Romantic comedy

2) The comedy of Humours

3) Comedy of Manners

4) Black or dark comedy

5) The sentimental comedy

Now All types of comedy discuss in detail

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Romantic comedy

Romantic comedy is the most popular of all the forms of entertainment. Shakespeare’s comedies are romantic comedies. It grew out of national tastes and traditions. in this kind of comedy the dramatist do not care for any rules laid by the ancient writers. The three unities are thrown to the wind. There is a free mixture of the comic and the tragic. This kind of tragedy is more realistic because life is not wholly  tragic or wholly comic. It is the mixture of both. Shakespeare knew this and mingled the yarn of joys and sorrows. It’s aim is not corrective or satiric. It is innocent, good-natured laughter. It is marked by love and laughter. Follies are of course exposed but the laughter is gentle and sympathetic. Even when the dramatist laughs, he laughs with sympathy. we laugh with people and not at them

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In the word of Charlton, “ The Shakespearean comedy is not satiric, it is poetic. it is not conservative it is creative . it is imaginative and not rational. It is the vision of an artist , not a critic’s  exposition”

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The world of Shakespeare an comedy is a “rainbow world love in idleness”. The action often takes place in some distant and far off land. The land is full of peace and happiness. It may be the forest of Arden or the shore of llyria or Messina. These are not real place but the dreamlands. Here, the lovers have no other business except  lovemaking.

Shakespeare’s beautiful romantic comedies are ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘A Mid Summer night’s Dream’, ‘As you like it’, ‘The winter’s Table’, and ‘The Temst’. Shakespeare says , “Music is food of love”. These plays are musical and full of dance and marry-making. There are also clownish characters who make us laugh. There is free mingling of romance and realism. The setting always poetic but it is skillfully related to the real life.

                Shakespeare’s comedies are full of sunny atmosphere , the idyllic nature humanity and laughter.      

  

The comedy of Humours

The comedy of Humours is a phrase generally used in connection with Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson was the most influential dramatist of Shakespeare’s time. His comedies include ‘Everyman in His Humour’,  ‘Every out of His Humour’, ‘The Silent Woman’, ‘volpone’, ‘The Alchemist’, and ‘Bartholomew fair’.his comedy is not true to life but larger then life. Each character represents some human passion or weakness. ‘Humour’ according to Ben Jonson is the human temperament. The passion that rules one life is humour , according to him.

Ben Jonson’s comedy is satirical in nature. His comedies generally take places in London. His purpose is to satirise the follies and weaknesses of his characters. Ben Jonson borrowed the word humour from medieval doctors who believed that human bodies were made of four humaours.

Let us see the four humours in detail :-

Elements	Nature	Qualities
1)      Earth	Sanguine worldly, practical &unsentimental	Ordinary human being with reasonable feelings and emotions
2)      Fire	Choleric	Angry, hot-temperde and Energetic
3)      Water	Lymphatic	Cold and Spiritless
4)      Air	Melancholic	Sad and cynical

    

According to this theory, man’s health and his whole character was thought to depend on the balance between the four humours in the body. Ben Jonson succeeded in writing comedies based on this theory of humour.   

Comedy of Manners

The comedy of Manners is a phrase often used in literary history and criticism. It developed during the Restoration age (1660-1700). The comedy of manners reflects the culture of the upper class in which manners are supreme. It is more or less satirical. Congreve, Wycherley wrote the comedy of Manners. It deals with the surface of the Restoration high up.

The characteristic of the comedy of Manners:-

        I.            This type of comedy reflects and presents the manners, modes, conventions of the upper classes of society.

      II.            If focuses on the life, manners, ways, love- intrigues and foppery of the upper and the aristocratic classes.

    III.            The scene of these comedies were generally laid in big cities like London.

    IV.            The locale or setting is generally laid in clubs, coffee houses, gambling houses etc.

      V.            It was in such places that the fops and gallants and fashionable, gay ladies assembled

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    VI.            These comedy-writers were influenced by Moliere and other foreign dramatists.

  VII.            It was probably the reaction against too much of Puritanism of the earlier age.

Congreve was the supreme master of this type of comedy . His notable comedies are :- ‘The Old Bachelor’, ‘The Double Dealer’, ‘ Love for Love’, ‘ The way of the world’.

Wycherley (1640-1716) wrote four plays ‘ Love in a Wood’, ‘The  Gentleman Dancing Master’,

‘The Country wife’ and ‘The plain Dealer’.

It is really   an artificial form of drama full of verbal wit and quite often bordering on obscenity.

Black or dark comedy

Sometimes in some plays there are no comic elements all though are called comedies. Even Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘Troilus and Cressida’ are termed as black comedies.

The dark comedy can be destined s a play based on the belief that human beings exist in purposeless universe in which they are subject to forces beyond their control and understanding. Moral  and ehical values are meaningless. Life is nothing but a tragic force.

In modern drama we find many examples of dark comedies. Pinter’s  ‘The home-coming’, and Orton’s  Entertaining Mr. Sloane   are the remarkable examples.

The sentimental comedy

Sentimental comedy is a kind of drama that appeared in the early 18^th century. It was in reaction to ‘ the comedy of manners’. The comedy of manners as we have noted earlier was immoral and often bordered  on vulgarity or obscenity. The reaction ‘The Comedy of Manners’ was first expressed in Jeremy Collier’s short view of the immorality and  Profaneness of the English stage. The sentimental comedy was a reaction against the immoral comedy of the Restoration period.

The characteristic of the sentimental comedy :-

        I.            The sentimental comedy was written with the intention of expressing moral sentiments. It was too sentimental. There was sometimes unnecessary tear-jerking elements.

      II.            In the Sentimental Comedy dramatic reality was sacrificed in an effort to edify and instruct.

    III.            It appeals to the spectator’s emotions and sentiments.

    IV.            The characters were either good or bad. They looked more like caricatures then real human beings.

      V.            The triumph of virtue was always shown in the end. It was often far from reality.

‘The conscious Lover’ is an example of the fully developed Sentimental Comedy. It had some success on the stage but people never took them very seriously. The sentimental comedy was satirized by other comic writers of the age. A German dramatist Brecht(1898-1956) has influenced writers all over the world. Many writers have been encouraged to think that drama ought to be concerned with political or social problems

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Conclusion :-

as we have discuss about all type of comedies.