Comedy of manners
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In English literature, the term comedy of manners (also anti-sentimental comedy) describes a genre of realistic, satirical
The comedy-of-manners genre originated in the
Early examples
The comedy of manners has been employed by Roman satirists since as early as the first century BC. Horace's Satire 1.9 is a prominent example, in which the persona is unable to express his wish for his companion to leave, but instead subtly implies so through wit.
More recent examples
The tradition of elaborate, artificial plotting, and epigrammatic dialogue was carried on by the Irish playwright
The term comedy of menace, 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 a somewhat Judeo-English accent).[3] Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming has been described as a mid-twentieth-century "comedy of manners".[3]
Other more recent examples include
Comedies of manners have been a staple of British film and television. The
References
- ^ A Handbook to Literature Fourth Edition (1980), C. Hugh Holman, Ed., pp. 91–92
- ^ George Henry Nettleton, Arthur British dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan p.149
- ^ a b Susan Hollis Merritt, Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter (Durham & London, 1990: Duke UP, 1995) 5, 9–10, 225–28, 240.
External links
- David Campton, Samuel French London (archived 4 November 2007).