The Concept of comedy, Romantic Comedy,Comedy of manners and Comedy of Humors.

1. Romantic comedy, comedy of Humors, Comedy of
Manners prepared by Dipti Vaghela

2. The Concept of Comedy
 In ordinary conversational English the words comedy and
comic are used for anything that is funny or laughable. An
uneducated person who goes to the theatre to see
Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale, which is described as a
comedy, may reasonably complain that it is not funny at all,
and that the money he has paid in expectation of a good laugh
has been wasted. The truth is of course that we use the word
comedy in different ways. It may not actually make us laugh,
but it must at least be amusing or entertaining – perhaps even
satirical, for it is clear that satire and comedy are closely
related. So it may be that Aristotle’s theory of Catharsis applies
to comedy as well as tragedy.

3.  Any history of comedy would have to begin with the ancient
Greek ‘comos’ (a revel) and the satyr plays which, in classic
times, were performed as a kind of comic relief. Comedy of
Aristophanes, generally satirical in tone, and still very much
alive when performed in translation today.
So, now let’s we understand three types of
comedy in detail…
1) Romantic Comedy
2) The comedy of Humours
3) The Comedy of manners

4. Romantic comedy
 Romantic comedy is the
most popular of all the
forms of entertainment.
The best way of describing
it is to mention five highly
successful examples like
‘Shakespeare’s Twelfth
Night, Goldsmith’s She
Stoops to Conquer, Wilde’s
The Importance of Being
Earnest, Shaw’s Pygmalion
and Noel Coward’s Blithe
Spirit.
love laughter
Romantic
Comedy

5.  These are all very different plays, but they have one thing in
common, namely a pleasant mixture of love and laughter.
Since it is love and laughter that make the world go round, the
popularity of romantic comedy is not difficult to explain.
 The earliest English romantic comedy is probably ‘Ralph
Roister Doister, written by a Nicholas Udall. Some twelve years
later another famous comedy, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, but
the authorship of this play is doubtful. In 1594, Robert Green
wrote ‘The Honorable History of Friar bacon and Friar Bungay’.
He was Shakespeare who carried romantic comedy almost to
perfection, especially during the period 1594-1600, with ‘A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, As you like it and Twelfth Night.

6. The ‘ Comedy of humours’
 The comedy of humours is a phrase generally used in
connection with Ben Jonson, who was the most influential
dramatist of Shakespeare’s time, though certainly not the best.
He was also an extremely productive writer not only of plays,
but also of masques, poetry and criticism. His comedies
include ‘ Every Man in his Humour, Every Man out of his
Humour, The Silent Woman, Volpone, The Alchemist and
Bartholomew fair. Jhonson’s idea was that comedy should not
be ‘true to life’ but ‘Larger than life’. It is important that the
reader should understand the special use of the word
‘humour’ here. It is not used in any of its modern senses, but
in the sense of a dominant passion or obsession.

7. A man’s health, and indeed his whole character, was thought to
depend on the balance between the four humours in his body:
Phlegm makes one
excessively calm and
docile
Choler makes one
highly ill-tempered.
The Humour of
Blood makes a man
excessively optimistic
even without the
slightest chance of
hope or success.
Black bile makes one
excessively melancholy

8. The Comedy of Manners
 The comedy of manners is a phrase often used in literary
history and criticism, thought its meaning is not always clear. It
is particularly applied in England to the restoration dramatists,
and especially Congreve (1670-1729) and Wycherley (1640-
1716). It is a type of comedy which can flourish in any civilised
urban society, and we see it again in Sheridan(1751-1816) and
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). It makes fun not to so much of
individual human beings and their humours as of social groups
and their fashionable manners. The comedy of manners is
most likely to be found in the high society of Victorian or
Edwardian days.

9. Comedy of Manners
Cynical
and
hard
Full of
verbal
wit
Highly
artificial

10. Reference
 English Literature by R.J.Rees