Comedy in Drama
Comedy in drama refers to the use of humor and lighthearted elements in a dramatic work to entertain and provoke laughter in the audience. It often involves amusing characters, witty dialogue, and humorous situations that provide a contrast to the serious themes or conflicts within the story. Comedy in drama serves to provide comic relief and offer a different perspective on the human experience.
5 Key excerpts on "Comedy in Drama"
eBook - ePub- Marjorie Boulton(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Whereas in tragedy we see people suffering because of their characters, in comedy we see them make fools of themselves because of their reactions to the comic situations; destiny in comedy brings out the humorous side of character. The treatment of character in comedy may range from the cynical and almost contemptuous, as in Jonson's The Silent Woman or Somerset Maugham's The Breadwinner, to the kindly and affectionate treatment of human fallibility as in As You Like It, Noel Coward's The Young Idea and Christopher Fry's Venus Observed. Sometimes in the comedy of character it is only the principal character who is really comic; for instance, in Molière's L ’ Avare only the miser Harpagon is really comic; the other characters, especially the young lovers, give the impression of being quite reasonable beings. Or, as in Jonson's comedies, all the characters may be comic. A good comedy of errors such as She Stoops to Conquer also has a strong character-interest. 10. Farce Farce is to comedy roughly what melodrama is to tragedy—it aims at producing laughter by exaggerated effects of various kinds and is without psychological depth. Characterization and wit are less important than a rapid succession of amusing situations. The comic situations are generally rather crude; farce has been called ‘custard-pie comedy’ because it often uses such purely material absurdities as people throwing custard pies or other messy things at each other's heads, heavy falls or instances of the perversity of inanimate objects. Surprises, coincidences and exaggerations abound. Probability is not much regarded. The form is on a relatively low artistic level, but good farce, like good melodrama, may show a high standard of craftsmanship in the writing, and it demands a high standard of slick production, especially in timing. Good farce is usually nearer to the comedy of errors than to the other kinds of comedy...
eBook - ePubThe Book of Literary Terms
The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship. Second Edition.
- Lewis Turco(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- University of New Mexico Press(Publisher)
...Both are concerned with narrative, and both use exactly the same elements of narrative: character, plot, atmosphere and theme. However, unlike fiction, drama is a composite genre, consisting of both written material and visual effects. The strengths of drama enable it to be more immediately apprehensible to the senses than are words in a book. The fiction writer is not limited to one or two writing techniques but may choose from a wide range of narrative devices. The dramatist’s range of writing techniques, however, is limited, for all that may be used onstage is spoken language (see The Book of Dialogue), not ordinarily narration or description, except as spoken by an actor or actress, though on occasion a play—such as “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder—may have a narrator on the stage filling in the exposition : background information that the audience may need in order to understand the significance of the dramatic segments. The writing tools of the playwright, then, are dialogue, monologue, soliloquy and the aside. In place of narration, however, the playwright is able to utilize stage action, and in place of description, the dramatist provides acts, scenes and sets, so that the audience can actually see and hear the development of character and plot. At this point in our discussion a consideration of Greek tragedy as it was analyzed by Aristotle may be of some value, for it is the paradigm upon which all later drama was founded. Tragedy The major and original subgenre of dramatic literature is tragedy, a dramatic form out of classical antiquity, the elements of which are plot, character, spectacle, thought, diction and harmony, i.e., the successful fusion of its parts. Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is the imitation of a “worthy or illustrious and perfect action.” It has “magnitude “and is written in elevated language that entertains, but it is not meant to be read, for it must be enacted upon the stage...
eBook - ePub- Robert Leach(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...But often the incongruity is only visible from a standpoint of accepted social morality, the morality which binds society together. The laughter may be cruel, but it is, at least in intent, corrective, as Bergson suggested. Consequently – and importantly – it is also intellectual. In other words, this comedy is provoked by the way we, as thinking beings, respond to the world, and human behaviour in the world, and how these relate to the social order. It attempts to teach through laughter: we see someone make a fool of themselves, and resolve not to behave like that. Philip Sidney wrote in 1580: comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he [the playwright] representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be, so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. (Sir Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetry) Many of the greatest writers of comedy – Jonson, Molière (1622–73), Congreve (1670–1729), Gogol (1809–52) – should be seen as moral instructors, and in their work those who are ridiculed, such as Volpone or Tartuffe, are also often punished. Meanwhile those who conform to social norms and expectations are rewarded, often with a spouse. This suggests for these morally didactic comedies a structure which both is and is not like that of tragedy. Like tragedy, this kind of comedy moves perceptibly from a beginning (in Aristotle’s sense), through a middle to a conclusion; but whereas the typical tragedy shows the fall of a good person from prosperity to disgrace or death, the typical comedy shows a journey in the opposite direction: while the immoral are brought low, the good person goes from ill fortune to prosperity. This is what Byron observed, and what Dante (1265–1321) asserted when he wrote that ‘comedy introduces a situation of adversity, but ends its matter in prosperity’...
eBook - ePubThe Collected Works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Illustrated
The Phenomenology of Spirit. The Logic of Hegel. Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, J. B. Baillie, William Wallace, S. W. Dyde, F. P. B. Osmaston, J. Sibree, Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, Ebenezer Brown Speirs(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing(Publisher)
...Faciam ut conmista sit Tragicocomoedia. He offers us as a reason for this intermixture the fact, that while gods and kings are represented among the dramatis personae, we have also in comic contrast to this the figure of the slave Sofia. With yet more frequency in modern dramatic poetry we have the interplay of tragic and comic situation; and this is naturally so, because in modern compositions the principle of an intimate personal life has its place too in tragedy, the principle which is asserted by comedy in all its freedom, and from the first has been predominant, forcing as it does into the background the substantive character of the content in which the ethical forces, I have referred to previously, are paramount. (ββ) The profounder mediation, however, of tragic and comic composition in a new whole does not consist in the juxtaposition or alteration of these contradictory points of view, but in a mutual accommodation, which blunts the force of such opposition. The element of subjectivity, instead of being exercised with all the perversity of the comic drama, is steeped in the seriousness of genuine social conditions and substantial characters, while the tragic steadfastness of volition and the depth of collisions is so far weakened and reduced that it becomes compatible with a reconciliation of interests and a harmonious union of ends and individuals. It is under such a mode of conception that in particular the modern play and drama arise. The profound aspect of this principle, in this view of the playwright, consists in the fact that, despite the differences and conflicts of interests, passions and characters, an essentially harmonious reality none the less results from human action. Even the ancient world possesses tragedies, which accept an issue of this character. Individuals are not sacrificed, but maintained without serious catastrophe...
- Josephine Guy, Ian Small(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In the process, society comedy itself can be revalued as a more serious and politically sophisticated dramatic form, at least in the hands of some playwrights. As we noted in Chapter 3, the commercial nature of British theatrical culture meant it was much less well disposed to experimentation than theatre in France. Yet this does not necessarily mean that genres like society drama were inevitably conservative...
