Comedy of manners
Encyclopedia
The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which 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 scandal, is generally less important than its witty dialogue. A great writer of comedies of manners was Oscar Wilde
, his most famous play being The Importance of Being Earnest
.
The comedy of manners was first developed in the new comedy of the Ancient Greek
playwright
Menander
. His style, elaborate plots, and stock characters were imitated by the Roman
playwrights 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 the ancien régime in such plays as L'École des femmes (The School for Wives, 1662), Le Misanthrope
(The Misanthrope, 1666), and most famously Tartuffe
(1664).
Modern television sitcoms that use the mockumentary
format, such as The Office and Modern Family
, use slightly altered forms of the comedy of manners to represent the daily and work lives of average people.
, 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.
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 sitcom
s. The Carry On films are a direct descendant of the comedy of manners style.
, which British drama critic Irving Wardle
based on the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace (1958), by David Campton
, is a jocular play-on-words derived from the "comedy of manners" (menace being manners pronounced with somewhat of a Judeo-English accent). Pinter's play The Homecoming
has been described as a mid-twentieth-century "comedy of manners".
In Boston Marriage
(1999), David 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, the two women make their serving woman the butt of haughty jokes, serving to point up the satire on class. Though displaying the verbal dexterity one associates with both the playwright and the genre, the patina of wit occasionally erupts into shocking crudity.
Other contemporary examples include Douglas Carter Beane
's As Bees in Honey Drown
, The Country Club
and The Little Dog Laughed
.
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus
Miles Gloriosus
Miles Gloriosus is a stock character of a boastful soldier from the comic theatre of ancient Rome, and variations on this character have appeared in drama and fiction ever since. The character derives from the alazôn or "braggart" of the Greek Old Comedy...
in ancient times, the fop
Fop
Fop became a pejorative term for a foolish man over-concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th century England. Some of the very many similar alternative terms are: "coxcomb", fribble, "popinjay" , fashion-monger, and "ninny"...
and the rake
Rake (character)
A rake, short for rakehell, is a historic term applied to a man who is habituated to immoral conduct, frequently a heartless womanizer. Often a rake was a man who wasted his fortune on gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the process...
during the Restoration
Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
, or an old person pretending to be young. The plot of the comedy, often concerned with scandal, is generally less important than its witty dialogue. A great writer of comedies of manners was Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, his most famous play being The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
.
The comedy of manners was first developed in the new comedy of the Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Menander
Menander
Menander , Greek dramatist, the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy, was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso...
. His style, elaborate plots, and stock characters were imitated by the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
playwrights Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
and Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
, whose comedies were widely known and copied during the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
. The best-known comedies of manners, however, may well be those of the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
playwright Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, who satirized the hypocrisy and pretension of the ancien régime in such plays as L'École des femmes (The School for Wives, 1662), Le Misanthrope
Le Misanthrope
The Misanthrope is a 17th-century comedy of manners in verse written by Molière. It was first performed on 4 June 1666 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, Paris by the King's Players....
(The Misanthrope, 1666), and most famously Tartuffe
Tartuffe
Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...
(1664).
Modern television sitcoms that use the mockumentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
format, such as The Office and Modern Family
Modern Family
Modern Family is an American television comedy series created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, which debuted on ABC on September 23, 2009. Lloyd and Levitan serve as showrunner and executive producers, under their Levitan-Lloyd Productions label...
, use slightly altered forms of the comedy of manners to represent the daily and work lives of average people.
English drama
In EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Much Ado about Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
might be considered the first comedy of manners, but the genre really flourished during the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
period. Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
, which was influenced by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
'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
William Wycherley
William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...
(The Country Wife
The Country Wife
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun...
, 1675) and William Congreve (The Way of the World
The Way of the World
The Way of the World is a play written by British playwright William Congreve. It premiered in 1700 in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London...
, 1700). In the late 18th century Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
(She Stoops to Conquer
She Stoops to Conquer
She Stoops to Conquer is a comedy by the Irish author Oliver Goldsmith, son of an Anglo-Irish vicar, first performed in London in 1773. The play is a great favourite for study by English literature and theatre classes in Britain and the United States. It is one of the few plays from the 18th...
, 1773) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
(The Rivals
The Rivals
The Rivals, a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, is a comedy of manners in five acts. It was first performed on 17 January 1775.- Production :...
, 1775; The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal is a play written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on May 8, 1777.The prologue, written by David Garrick, commends the play, its subject, and its author to the audience...
, 1777) revived the form.
The tradition of elaborate, artificial plotting and epigrammatic dialogue was carried on by the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
in Lady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893...
(1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
(1895). In the 20th century, the comedy of manners reappeared in the plays of the British dramatists Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
(Hay Fever
Hay Fever
Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1924 and first produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the first Judith Bliss. Laura Hope Crews played the role in New York...
, 1925) and Somerset Maugham and the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, as well as various British sitcom
British sitcom
A British sitcom tends, as it does in most other countries, to be based on a family, workplace or other institution, where the same group of contrasting characters is brought together in each episode. Unlike American sitcoms, where twenty or more episodes in a season is the norm, British sitcoms...
s. The Carry On films are a direct descendant of the comedy of manners style.
Twentieth-century examples
The term comedy of menaceComedy of menace
Comedy of menace is a term used to describe the plays of David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter by drama critic Irving Wardle, borrowed from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958...
, which British drama critic Irving Wardle
Irving Wardle
John Irving Wardle is an English writer and theatre critic.He was born on 20 July 1929 in Manchester, Lancashire, the son of John Wardle and his wife Nellie . His father was drama critic on the Bolton Evening News, and a regular performer at the Bolton Little Theatre...
based on the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace (1958), by David Campton
David Campton
David Campton was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years...
, is a jocular play-on-words derived from the "comedy of manners" (menace being manners pronounced with somewhat of a Judeo-English accent). Pinter's play The Homecoming
The Homecoming
The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...
has been described as a mid-twentieth-century "comedy of manners".
In Boston Marriage
Boston Marriage (play)
Boston Marriage is a 1999 play by American playwright David Mamet. The play concerns two women at the turn of the 20th century who are in a "Boston marriage," a relationship between two females that may involve both physical and emotional intimacy...
(1999), David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
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, the two women make their serving woman the butt of haughty jokes, serving to point up the satire on class. Though displaying the verbal dexterity one associates with both the playwright and the genre, the patina of wit occasionally erupts into shocking crudity.
Other contemporary examples include Douglas Carter Beane
Douglas Carter Beane
Douglas Carter Beane is an American playwright and screenwriter. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Beane now lives in New York...
's As Bees in Honey Drown
As Bees In Honey Drown
As Bees In Honey Drown is a satirical comedy by Douglas Carter Beane, an American playwright and screenwriter. The first showing of the play was in New York City in June, 1997. Four weeks later it moved to Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village, where it played for a year. It was also a...
, The Country Club
The Country Club (play)
The Country Club was originally an Off-Broadway stage play written by Douglas Carter Beane.The story is set in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, in the womblike cub room of the club of the title, as the comedy follows a year in the lives of six insular friends through a series of holiday-themed parties...
and The Little Dog Laughed
The Little Dog Laughed (play)
The Little Dog Laughed is a play by Douglas Carter Beane.The four characters are an actor, Mitchell, his acerbic agent Diane, a hustler named Alex, and Alex's girlfriend Ellen...
.