Comedy (drama)

The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία, which is a compound either of κῶμος (revel) or κώμη (village) and ᾠδή (singing): it is possible that κῶμος itself is derived from κώμη, and originally meant a village revel. The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός), which strictly means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of "laughter-provoking".[2] The word came into modern usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning.[1]

Albert Edelfelt's drawing from the Finnish comedy play Heath Cobblers premiered in 1876.

In ancient Greece, comedy seems to have originated in songs or recitations apropos of fertility festivals or gatherings, or also in making fun at other people or stereotypes. In the Poetics, Aristotle states that comedy originated in phallic rituals and festivals of mirth. It is basically an imitation of "the ridiculous, which is a species of the ugly". However, Aristotle taught that comedy is a good thing. It brings forth happiness, which for Aristotle is the ideal state, the final goal in any activity. He does believe that we humans feel pleasure oftentimes by doing the wrong thing, but he does not necessarily believe that comedy and humor is the wrong thing. It is also not true for Aristotle that a comedy must involve sexual humor to qualify as a comedy. A comedy is about the fortunate arise of a sympathetic character. A happy ending is all that is required in his opinion.

In contrast, Plato taught that comedy is a destruction to the self. He believed it produces an emotion that overrides rational self-control and learning. In The Republic, Plato says that the guardians of the state should avoid laughter, "for ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter, his condition provokes a violent reaction." Plato says comedy should be tightly controlled if one wants to achieve the ideal state.

Literary critic Northrop Frye described the comic genre as a drama that pits two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. In The Anatomy of Criticism (1957) he depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old", but this dichotomy is seldom described as an entirely satisfactory explanation. A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to its hopes; in this sense, the youth is understood to be constrained by its lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse to ruses that engender dramatic consequences.

• Ancient Greek comedy, as practiced by Aristophanes and Menander
• Ancient Roman comedy, as practiced by Plautus and Terence
• Ancient Indian comedy, as practiced in Sanskrit drama
• Burlesque, from Music hall and Vaudeville to Performance art
• Citizen comedy, as practiced by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson
• Clowns such as Richard Tarlton, William Kempe and Robert Armin
• Comedy of humours, as practiced by Ben Jonson and George Chapman
• Comedy of intrigue, as practiced by Niccolò Machiavelli and Prince Manuel
• Comedy of manners, as practiced by Molière, William Wycherley and William Congreve
• Comedy of menace, as practiced by David Campton and Harold Pinter
• comédie larmoyante or 'tearful comedy', as practiced by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée and Louis-Sébastien Mercier
• Commedia dell'arte, as practiced in the twentieth century by Dario Fo, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Jacques Copeau
• Farce, from Georges Feydeau to Joe Orton and Alan Ayckbourn
• Jester
• Laughing comedy, as practiced by Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Restoration comedy, as practiced by George Etherege, Aphra Behn and John Vanbrugh
• Sentimental comedy, as practiced by Colley Cibber and Richard Steele
• Shakespearean comedy, as practiced by William Shakespeare
• Dadaist and Surrealist performance, usually in cabaret form
• Theatre of the Absurd, used by some to describe Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and Eugène Ionesco[3]