Comedy - Examples and Definition of Comedy

Definition of Comedy
Comedy is a literary style and a kind of dramatic paintings that is amusing and satirical in its tone, by and large having a cheerful ending. The motif of this dramatic work is overcome unpleasant condition by way of creating comedian effects, ensuing in a happy or a success conclusion.

Thus, the purpose of comedy is to amuse the audience. Comedy has more than one sub-genres depending upon the supply of the humor, context in which an author delivers dialogues, and transport methods, which include farce, satire, and burlesque. Tragedy is opposite to comedy, as tragedy deals with sorrowful and tragic occasions in a story.

Types of Comedy
There are five forms of comedy in literature:

Romantic Comedy
Romantic comedy includes a theme of love leading to a satisfied conclusion. We locate romantic comedy in Shakespearean plays and a few Elizabethan contemporaries. These plays are concerned with idealized love affairs. It is a truth that authentic love by no means runs smoothly; however, love overcomes problems and leads to a happy union.

Comedy of Humors
Ben Johnson is the primary dramatist who conceived and popularized this dramatic style at some stage in the late 16th century. The time period humor derives from the Latin phrase humor, which means “liquid.” It comes from a idea that the human frame has four liquids, or humors, which consist of phelgm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. It explains that, when humans have a balance of these humors of their bodies, they stay healthy.

Comedy of Manners
This shape of dramatic genre deals with intrigues and members of the family of women and gentlemen living in a complicated society. This shape relies upon high comedy, derived from sparkle and wit of dialogues, violations of social traditions, and precise manners, by way of nonsense characters like jealous husbands, wives, and foppish dandies. We locate its use in Restoration dramatists, particularly in the works of Wycherley and Congreve.

Sentimental Comedy
Sentimental drama consists of each comedy and sentimental tragedy. It appears in literary circles due to reaction of the middle magnificence against obscenity and indecency of Restoration Comedy of Manners. This shape, which incorporates scenes with extreme emotions evoking immoderate pity, received popularity the various center elegance audiences in the eighteenth century.

Tragicomedy
This dramatic style includes each tragic and comedic elements. It blends both factors to lighten the general temper of the play. Often, tragicomedy is a serious play that ends happily.

Comedy Examples from Literature
Example #1: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (By William Shakespeare)
William Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a superb example of a romantic comedy, supplying young fanatics falling comically inside and out of love for a brief period. Their real world troubles get resolved magically, enemies reconcile, and actual enthusiasts unite within the end.

Example #2: Every Man in His Humor (By Ben Johnson)
In his play Every Man in His Humor, Ben Johnson brings a comedy of humors. An overpowering suspicion of, and obsession with, his wife – that she might be unfaithful to him – controls Kitely. Then a rustic gull determines every choice of George Downright that allows you to apprehend the manners of the metropolis gallant. Kno’well worried for moral improvement of his son, attempts to spy on him.

Example #3: The Conscious Lovers (By Sir Richard Steele)
Sir Richard Steele’s play, The Conscious Lovers, is a best-known and famous sentimental comedy, which is sort of a melodrama. It characterizes intense exaggeration, managing trials of its penniless leading function Indiana. The play ends luckily with the invention of Indiana as heiress.

Example #4: All’s Well that Ends Well (By William Shakespeare)
Shakespeare’s play, All’s Well that Ends Well, flawlessly sums up tragic and comic elements. This tragicomedy play shows antics of low-born however committed Helena, who tries to win the affection of her lover, Bertram. She eventually succeeds in marrying him, even though she decides now not to accept him until she wears the circle of relatives ring of her husband and bears him a child. She employs a amazing deal of trickery by way of disguising herself as Bertram’s other, and fakes her death. Bertram discovers her treachery at the end but realizes Helena did all that for him and expresses his love for her.

Function of Comedy
Comedy has a tendency to deliver humor and set off laughter in plays, films, and theaters. The number one characteristic of comedy is to amuse and entertain the audience, while it also portrays social institutions and people as corrupt, and ridicules them thru satirizing, parodying, and poking a laugh at their vices. By doing this, authors disclose foibles and follies of individuals and society with the aid of using comic elements.