Week 3: Shakespearean Romantic Comedy/ Comedy of Manners

The word comedy seems to be connected with the Greek verb meaning “to revel,” and
comedy arose out of the revels associated with the rites of Dionysus. Aristotle, in his Poetics,
states that comedy originated in phallic songs.
Classical comedy began in ancient Greece with the aim of amusing and entertaining the
audience. The comedy has maintained some fixed features through the centuries:
• it generally deals with ordinary characters set in everyday situations in an amusing way;
• it usually begins with misfortunes; classical comedy begins and ends with happy resolution;
• the playwright is generally the mouthpiece of the vices and follies of the society he/she
belongs to;
• specific sets of comic characters are developed: they do not evolve in the course of the play
and their names sometimes reveal their nature;
• the plot is mainly based on love and relies on witty dialogue and deliberate
misunderstandings, plays on words and disguise.

William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) revived and developed classical
forms of drama such as tragedy and comedy and were among the first to reflect on different
dramatic genres. During the Restoration period in the late seventeenth century, the comedy of
manners, or Restoration comedy, portraying citizens from the upper echelons of society in
witty dialogues, was very popular.