© Folger Shakespeare Library 2007
Types of Comedy
Comedy of Ideas:
• Characters argue about ideas
• Characters use wit and clever language to mock
• Characters use satire to laugh at that which is dear—family, friends, religion, politics,
marriage, etc.
Comedy of Manners:
• Verbal wit, skillful use of language to elicit humor from ordinary situations
• Amorous intrigues among upper classes
• “Drawing room” comedy of clever speech and witty language
Farce:
• Plot is full of coincidences, mis-timings, misunderstandings, mistaken identities
• Characters are puppets of fate
• Loss of identity because of fate or an accident
Low Comedy:
• Slapstick
• Pratfalls, dirty gestures, jokes about bodily functions, sex, and physical deformities
Theater of the Absurd:
• Plays that make us uncomfortable, uneasy, unsure of whether there is any order,
sense, or meaning in existence
• “Theatrical” rather than realistic, often setting forth obviously impossible situations with
obviously unreal characters
• Serious but often (or at least intermittently) comic, especially satiric
• Basic themes include:
o human loneliness in a world without God
o the inability to communicate
o the dehumanization and impotence of individuals in a bourgeois society
o the meaninglessness of life
