The Human Comedy

The Comedic Nature of Lysistrata On the year 411 BC, Aristophanes wrote the comedic play Lysistrata, the first anti-war play in the world. Comedy takes various forms, and the purpose of this essay is to analyze the comedic elements used in Lysistrata to determine whether it is a farce or a satire. Why is this important? Michael Moses, the president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics said: “The key to adjusting the relative strengths and weakness of a particular work was for the…

Comedy and tragedy are often two sides of the same coin, black and white in nature, but in the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf this nature becomes a messy storm of whether we’re supposed to laugh, cry, or both. When we started reading this play, I had no doubt in my mind that it was a comedy. The conversations between George and Martha were sometimes cruel, but I saw it as banter that’s often seen in long-term relationships. However, the class reacted in quite a different way from me, they…

“Slapstick” is classed as a style of humor, which involves exaggerated physical activity that takes human common sense to a further level of their mind. The phrase “slapstick" belongs to the Italian language word batacchio. In England it is known as a club-like object combined of two wooden slats used in commedia dell'arte. If the battacchio is struck it makes smacking noise loudly and with such little force it transfers from the object through to the person acting like they have been struck.…

Comedy is seen and enjoyed by many all around the world, claiming its place as a staple of human culture. Comedy has but one rule: it must be funny. Other than this, humorists can take any and all liberties to fundamentally change the affect of their art; resulting in a wide array of comedic styles. The “comedy” umbrella somehow shelters the slapstick fun of Laurel and Hardy, the deadpan observations of Steven Wright and the surrealism of Monty Python. These comedians, along with all of their…

Comedy, like every good theatrical performance, needs to engage the audience by evoking emotions based on what is shown on stage. However, a comical play calls for laughter, which tends to disengage audience’s attention from the play’s context. This self-contradictory nature of comedy seems to work against the aim of theater. This makes comedy a difficult theatrical art to work with because since it should find the right balance in its nature. Woodruff points out that “the paradox of comedy is…

Comedy has been and always will be a classic genre of books, music, movies, and staged theatrical productions. Reckless by Craig Lucas is an example of a successful attempt at dark comedy. It makes light of hired assassinations, murder, accidental killing, and human psychology. I found this play to be hilarious. It reminded me of one of my favorite mottos: if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. But what is it about this play that makes the comedy so successful? What occurs throughout the course of the…

Comedy has always been an important aspect of every person's life and enables humans to have the ability to not only laugh at certain jokes, as well as actions. In addition, comedy allows people to create or share bonds with one another. Comedy was first introduced in the Greek culture through the form of plays, gladiator battles, and festivals. The word pertaining to the Greek culture for comedy, myths, are nonetheless local folktales to explain the creation of a particular natural phenomenon.…

with Sheridan famous comedy “The School for Scandal” as a comedy of manners or a typical Restoration comedy. The comedy of manners is a phrase often used in literary history and eroticism. It is particularly applied to the Restoration dramatists in England, and especially to Congreve and Wycherley; but it is a type of comedy which can flourish in any civilized urban society, and we see it again in Sheridan (1751-1816). This kind of comedy makes fun not so much of individual human beings and…

Another difference between these two films is the relationship portrayed on screen. As discussed in Denby’s article in Common Culture, Knocked Up, and other contemporary comedies, portray a slacker versus striver relationship unlike Adam’s Rib, which is a screwball comedies. In Knocked Up, Ben is the stoner, Canadian, illegal immigrant who lives with __ other unemployed men. In contrast, Allison is put together, and works at E! Denby argues that Adam’s Rib contains more value over Knocked Up…

its use of puns, which according to the theory of incongruity stated by Monro are funny (n.d, p.91). According to Freud’s definition of comedy “a person appears comic to us if, in comparison to ourselves makes too great an expenditure on his bodily functions and too little on his mental ones (n.d, p.752). But, also according to Meeker and Langer who state that comedy is use as a strategy of survival and to celebrate life (Meeker 1997, p.15; Langer p.762). Normally death is something tragic and…