Chapter 2: Defining comedy

Recommended reading

Bradbrook, M.C. The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) [ISBN 9780521295260].

Farley-Hills, D. The Comic in Renaissance Comedy. (London: Macmillan, 1981) [ISBN 9780333275146].

Leggatt, A. Introduction to English Renaissance Comedy. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) [ISBN 9780719049651].

Newman, K. Shakespeare’s Rhetoric of Comic Character: Dramatic Convention in Classical and Renaissance Comedy. (New York and London: Routledge, 2008) [ISBN 9780415489089].

Introduction

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, whose Poetics constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of literary aesthetics in Western culture, had a very simple definition of comedy. For him, anything could be defined as comic as long as it was not clearly tragic. In practice, this meant that a ‘comedy’ could be any kind of text or performance that did not end with death, destruction or suffering. It is interesting to note in Aristotle’s definition that humour or joking does not have to be a quality of the text in order for it to be comic.

In the English literary tradition, it is the early-modern period that introduces the idea of humour and joking to comedy as an essential part of the form. Comedies were extremely popular on the Renaissance stage, outnumbering both tragedies and history plays combined by about three to one. However, it would be fair to say that comedy has received much less critical attention, certainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, than either history or tragedy, and we may be forgiven for believing comedy was a minor form. This is certainly not the case, and the introduction of joking may go some way to explaining the relative lack of scholarly interest in comedy, as it does not conform to the standards of high moral seriousness that have interested and informed English literary criticism for much of the past century.

Activity

What is it about the nature of comedy that means it is often considered the poor relation of other dramatic forms? Consider the reasons why humour does not seem to translate itself across the centuries as well as something like tragedy.

Comedy has traditionally been seen to stand in opposition to tragedy, sharing many of its themes and dealing with similar issues but finding different solutions to the conflicts it narrates. For example, in tragedy, human weaknesses are seen as dangers, which have the potential to subvert the order of the state, whereas in comedy, human weaknesses are seen as foibles that can be changed and all conflicts can be reconciled. A tragedy often ends with multiple deaths, whereas a comedy will end with multiple marriages. In these examples, the opposition between tragedy and comedy appears to work, but it is useful to think of comedy as an independent form that has a very different agenda to that of its tragic counterpart.

One of the problems with constructing a definite model of early-modern comedy is that the form itself was not entirely settled. Comedies often came into being through a combination of a number of different dramatic forms. This is especially true of Shakespeare. English Renaissance comedy, then, is a kind of assemblage of folk performances like the ‘wooing’ play, or the ‘combat’ play, combined with the improvised clowning of the fools and mummers and the verbal punning of the public-school dramatists who took their inspiration from ancient Roman writers like Terence and Plautus.

Activity

Consider the structure of the plays on this syllabus. Can you see examples of any other types or styles of performance operating within them?

To begin to formulate a definition of early-modern comedy, we might begin by trying to establish how it understands the world. Comedy seems to feature a very distinctive idea of humanity, one that can be fearsomely cruel and savagely indignant, but also able to forgive and to allow the possibility of change. Comedy dramatises interpersonal relationships that are generally more forgiving than those of tragedy. The population of comedy is more evenly distributed among men and women. Locations tend to be humbler, and the stakes much lower than in tragedy.

Also, it could be said that comedy is writing about the body. Bodily excess or deficit can both be sites for humour, whether it be Ursula the pig woman of Bartholomew Fair, the hypocritical abstinence of Malvolio, or Cesario, the boy who lacks a penis in Twelfth Night, the body itself seems to make us laugh. This is clearly seen in the continual popularity of types of slapstick humour that produce laughter by virtue of the uncontrollability of the bodies they depict. Clowns create physical chaos in the name of humour, simply because they are showing us ways of using our bodies that we have long since been told not to copy. This excess or deficit of the body is often clearest at the level of performance, but many comic themes also seem to focus on our bodily needs, bodily desires or even bodily wastes. The themes of comedy are essentially about what we want, whether it be gold for our pockets or a partner to love, and this is the primary fuel for its humour, as it is in the pursuit of those things we want most that we reveal ourselves to be most foolish.

Activity

What do the characters of Shakespearean and Jonsonian comedy want? What are their prime motivations?

Clowns and comedians

The clowns and comedians of the early-modern stage were extremely popular and important members of their theatrical companies. Clowns like Robert Wilson, Richard Tarlton and Will Kemp enjoyed a particular kind of celebrity status during their careers. By the time of his death in 1588, Richard Tarlton had acquired an almost legendary reputation due to his ability to make an audience laugh simply by sticking his head out of the Tiring House (the upstage area where actors both changed and made their entrances). Will Kemp is known for his Nine Day’s Wonder, a text that commemorates the occasion on which he danced all the way from London to Norwich. The particular skill of Tarlton, Wilson and Kemp was their talent for improvisation. Their performances would combine songs, dances and jigs, and musicianship, along with slapstick and verbal humour. Clowns could be exasperating for the other actors, as their popularity and improvisational skill meant that they would often take more stage time with their extemporised routines than they should have done. Just as the genre of Renaissance comedy incorporates a variety of older comic forms, so the performers responsible for producing laughter were experts in a whole series of theatrical skills.

Pastoral comedy and city comedy

The comedies that you will study for this subject fall into two rough categories: pastoral, or festive comedy, and city, or citizen comedy. Shakespearean comedy is predominantly pastoral, although there are exceptions, whereas Jonson is primarily an exponent of the city comedy form.

Of the two types of comedy, pastoral comedy is the form that we associate most with the folkloric assemblage of types outlined above. City comedy, on the other hand, borrows many of its plot forms and characters from the Roman ‘New Comedy’ of Terence, among others. As you will see, both have very different comic identities.

For this subject, the most unambiguously pastoral comedies are Shakespeare’s As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, although Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, and The Taming of the Shrew contain pastoral elements. Pastoral comedy is interested in the themes of love, romance and forgiveness. Its principal characters tend to be young and belong to the educated minor aristocracy, whereas its locations tend to be well-kept courts or houses or rural settings like the Forest of Arden or the wood outside Athens. Pastoral comedy is interested in marriage intrigues and the passage of true love. Consider, for example, Portia’s marriage test in The Merchant of Venice, or the fiery courtship of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. As is often the case with all Shakespearean drama, the central narrative movement of pastoral comedy revolves around the idea of removing societal conflict and replacing it with harmonious relationships.

City comedy, as its name suggests, finds its settings in the major cities of Europe, most often London. The difference between an aristocratic or rural setting and an urban one has a real effect on the tone of the comedy, which tends to be interested in revealing veneality and vice. The relationship between vice and the city is clearly seen in Jonson’s prologue to The Alchemist:

Our Scene is London, ‘cause we would make knowne,

No countries mirth is better then our owne.

No clime breeds better matter, for your whore,

Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more,

Whose manners, now call’d humours, feed the stage:

And which have still beene subject, for the rage

Or spleene of comick-writers. (Prologue, 5–11).

Here, Jonson explicitly outlines the types of person he feels London breeds: prostitutes, pimps, con-men and braggarts. City comedy is also populated with characters known as ‘cozeners’ or ‘cony-catchers’, confidence tricksters who ‘gull’ their unsuspecting victims out of their money. In the Jonsonian city, everyone is out for themselves, and no human relationship seems to be able to stand outside an economic relationship. The city is a dog-eat-dog world, in which everyone is continually in pursuit of acquisitions, and everything is commodified.

Activity

Find some examples of ‘gulling’ and ‘cozening’ in Jonson’s city comedy. What does this tell you about the character’s attitude towards their victims, and their view of humanity in general?

Jonson also makes reference to the ‘humours’, a theory of physiognomy that informed his characterisations. The humours were the four bodily fluids that were considered to be essential to the constitution of a human being. These were: blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy, and are the source of the word ‘humour’ that we now take to mean merriment or jocularity. According to the theory, if one’s humours were in a state of balance with one another, then one would have a pleasant and well-adjusted disposition. If, however, one of the humours should take precedent over any other, then the afflicted person would become defined by the dominant fluid. Hence, if one has a predominance of choler, you would become bilious: that is, disagreeable and cantankerous. If, however, you suffered from a preponderance of blood, you would become sanguine and therefore brave, hopeful and amorous. When introduced into comedy, the theory of the humours serves as a means of providing stock or stereotypical characters of the kind found in the Italian Commedia Dell’arte, or even in many of the TV sitcoms of recent years. These characters are driven entirely by one sole motivating characteristic that defines them over all others. To look at the dramatis personae of Volpone, for example, is to see the comedy of humours in action. Each character is named after an animal, and as such, the behaviour of each one is determined by the distinctive attributes of that animal.

What follows is a table that offers a quick guide to the principal differences between pastoral and city comedy. Please be sensitive to the fact that this table is schematic, and therefore not all categories or differences will apply to every play on this syllabus.

Differences between pastoral and city comedy
  Pastoral City
Location Court/country City
Themes Love Greed
Class Aristocratic Bourgeois
Outcomes Marriage/reconcilliation Unmasking/shaming
World View Optimism/rebirth Pessimism
Moral Celebrates vitality Condemns vice
Form Folkloric Greco-Roman

Reading comedy

There are several different aspects to comedy of which you should make yourself aware. Comedy does not work in a uniform way, but rather it uses several different strategies in order to produce its humorous effects. Four of the most widely used techniques you will discover are satire, farce, parody and dramatic irony.

Satire works by presenting a character whose personality invites the audience to laugh at them. This requires a key lack of self-awareness on the part of the character, who may be overly proud, pompous, or hypocritical. In order for satire of this kind to work, there has to be a sense of perceptual distance between the character’s view of themselves and our view of them.

Farce aims to produce a loud burst of laughter rather than simply raise a smile. It tends to involve fast-paced scenes that are predominantly about exaggerated physical action rather than sophisticated verbal wit. Farcical scenes might involve slapstick humour, a series of rapid entrances and exits, absurd misrecognitions, violent confrontations, or a sudden reversal of fortune.

Parody is a comic technique that feeds from the voices of other people. It copies or emulates the pattern of another’s speech, or the style of another’s writing, and mutates it, usually through exaggeration, in order to achieve a humorous effect. An example of parody from A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be the play of ‘Pyramis and Thisbe’ produced by the mechanicals, in which Shakespeare parodies another form of Elizabethan drama, the tragic interlude.

Dramatic irony involves the staging of situations so that they cause a series of repercussions not intended by those on stage. Jonson makes full use of dramatic irony, especially when developing plots that depend upon the idea of confidence tricks or gulling. Dramatic irony of this kind works along the principle of the possession and withholding of information among characters in order to produce situations in which there are people on-stage who do not know what is going to happen, whereas members of the audience already do.

Activity

Look for examples of these four types of comic action in the plays on this syllabus. Can you think of any other types of comic action not listed here?

Learning outcomes

Having read this chapter, in conjunction with your own study, you should be able to: