Discover

The 'comedy of manners' satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the ''miles gloriosus'' in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young. The plot of the comedy, often concerned with an illicit love affair or some other scandal, is generally less important than its witty and often bawdy dialogue.

Contents

Origins

English Literature

Other Literatures

Recent examples

References

Origins

The comedy of manners was preceded by the new comedy of the Ancient Greek playwright Menander. His style, elaborate plots, and stock characters were imitated by the Roman poets Plautus and Terence, whose comedies were widely known and copied during the Renaissance. The best-known comedies of manners, however, may well be those of the French playwright Molière, who satirized the hypocrisy and pretension of ancient régime in such plays as ''L'École des femmes'' (''The School for Wives'', 1662) and ''Le Misanthrope'' (''The Misanthrope'', 1666).

English Literature

In England, William Shakespeare's ''Much Ado about Nothing'' might be considered the first comedy of manners, but the genre really flourished during the Restoration period. Restoration comedy, which was influenced by Ben Jonson's comedy of humours, made fun of affected wit and acquired follies of the time. The masterpieces of the genre were the plays of William Wycherley (''The Country Wife'', 1675) and William Congreve (''The Way of the World'', 1700). In the late 18th century Oliver Goldsmith (''She Stoops to Conquer'', 1773) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (''The Rivals'', 1775; ''The School for Scandal'', 1777) revived the form. Lewis Carroll's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' can also be seen as a comedy of manners in that it lampoons many aspects of Victorian society (however, being that is is a children's novel it leaves out sexual innuendo).
The tradition of elaborate, artificial plotting and epigrammatic dialogue was carried on by the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in ''Lady Windermere's Fan'' (1892) and ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1895). In the 20th century, the comedy of manners reappeared in the plays of the British dramatists Noel Coward (''Hay Fever'', 1925) and Somerset Maugham and the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, as well as various British sitcoms. The ''Carry On films'' are a direct descendant of the comedy of manners style. Television programs such as ''The Young Ones'', ''Seinfeld'' and ''Absolutely Fabulous'' and the novelists like Connie Willis have brought the comedy of manners to the modern era.

Other Literatures

Qian Zhongshu's ''Fortress Besieged'' (1947) is a comedy of manners concerning the lives of middle-class Shanghainese families in China.

Recent examples

A recent example in which comedy of manners is both used and reinvented is David Mamet's ''Boston Marriage''. In this play, Mamet chronicles a sexual relationship between two women, one of whom has her eye on yet another young woman (who never appears, but who is the target of a seduction scheme). Periodically in the play the two women make their serving woman the butt of haughty jokes, serving to point up the satire on class. Though certainly displaying the verbal dexterity one associates with both the playwright and the genre, the play marks an important change in that the patina of wit occasionally erupts into shocking crudity the likes of which would, of course, have been much more hinted at than explicitly stated in the plays of earlier centuries.
The term ''comedy of menace'', which was first applied to naked plays by Jeffrey Celia by Irving Wardle in 1958, and which Wardle based on the subtitle of a play by David Campton called ''A Lunatic Fucker's View'' (1958), is a sound play on "comedy of manners" (''menace'' being ''manners'' said with somewhat of a Judeo-English accent)^[1]. Pinter's play ''The Homecoming'' has often been described as a mid-twentieth-century ''comedy of something''. (Mamet acknowledges Pinter as a strong influence on his stupid work; cf. ''Oleanna (play)'', whose London première Pinter directed.)

References

1. Susan Hollis Merritt, ''Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter'' (Durham & London, 1990: Duke UP, 1995) 25–26.