Types of Comedy
• Comedy of Ideas
• Comedy of Manners
• Farce
• Low Comedy
Candide uses
them all!
Comedy of Ideas
• In comedy of ideas the characters argue ideas
or are representative of people who hold these
ideas. The dramatic action is an embodiment
of these ideas in conflict; not an allegory, this
genre uses characters, who remain essentially
personalities, capable of change, pitting their
wits (or lack of them) against those who view
reality differently.
Comedy of Manners
• Referred to as the amorous intrigues of the
aristocratic classes, this comedy emphasizes
the mechanism of language, and reduces
drama and life to a sheen of verbal wit. Such
comedy does not hesitate to sacrifice humanity
to dialogue; puns, paradoxes, epigrams, and
witticisms of all types are the tools it uses
often in the service of satire.
Farce
• This comedy is most readily identified by the
devices which drive the plot: mistaken
identities, coincidences, and mistimings, The
characters become the puppets of fate,
Typically the plot is predictably improbable:
devices include twins separated at birth,
unhappy matches by tyrannical parents,
allegiances complicated by money and birth
and a ragshop of happy endings.
Low Comedy
• At the bottom of the comedy ladder man is almost
indistinguishable from the animal. The laughter is
longest and loudest over the dirty joke or gesture.
At this depth, comedy unerringly finds the lowest
common denominator. Typically, this is the rung
for bathroom humor where bodily functions elicit
shock and guffaw. Physical mishaps, pratfalls,
slapstick and loud collisions are the obvious
elements and as well as deformed masks and
characterizations: long noses, humped backs, and
dwarves.
Incongruity: an Intellectual Appeal
• In comedy the appeals are made to the head, not
the heart. As audience members, the playwright
expects us to see the incongruity (an intellectual
process) of an action.
• Comedy, because of this coldly rational approach,
lifts us out of the emotional aspects of an idea.
• Social critics seize on this emphasis on the
unemotional aspect of comedy (where our
defenses of our pet theories are down) and for
them comedy becomes a lever for change.
Intellectual to emotional responses:
• Comedy is successful in changing our emotional
support.
• This change not only allows us to feel superior to
the comic character, but also to see his or her
foibles. We can look at the character and say, “I
hope I am not like that fool.”
• We sense our own rigidity and past reluctance to
change and in comedy we see how a character’s
inability to change makes him laughable.
Characters fail to see what readers see
The reader or audience perceives the folly of the
characters. “Consequently, the fun of a comedy
usually consists of the reactions of the other
characters to the continuing stupidities of the
principal character until he finally sees how
distorted he is, or the others decide that it would be
heartless to make him face his realities… [Comedy]
is based on the principle that no man knows what
he is, that he cannot see his real mirror images but
only what he wants to see.”
--Francis Hodge
The Comic Pattern
What goes up often plummets down.
Comic Problems
• Classic comic problems include thwarted love,
eccentric behavior, and corruption in high
places.
• Moving from exposition to complication, the
problems get much worse.
• Complication is fueled by misunderstanding,
mistakes in identity, errors in judgment,
excessive or unreasonable behavior and
coincidences.
Comic Climax
Confusion reaches a peak, misunderstanding is
dominant, pressure is at a high point, choices
must be made and solutions found. The
catastrophe—changing or turning point—often
introduces a sudden revelation in which a key
fact or identity, or event is planned to characters
and audience at the same time.
Comic Denouement
The comic denouement resolves the initial
problems and allows for comic resolution which
involves “setting things right” at every level of
action—individual lives are straightened out,
people at odds with each other are reconciled,
new families are formed through marriage, and
a healthy social order is reestablished.
Education and Change
These are two key features of comedy—
characters learn something about themselves,
their society or the way to love and live.
Their education makes it possible for them to
improve, and by implication, for the world to
improve. Alternately, some comedies educate
the audience and or reader.
The Comic Ladder
Satire
Inconsistencies of character
Verbal Wit
Plot devices
Physical mishaps
Obscenity
Two approaches of the satirist
• Formal/Direct: The satiric voice that speaks
usually in first person point of view, either
directly to the reader or to a character, is called
the Adversarius in satire .
• Indirect: The satire is expressed through a
narrative and characters who are the butt of the
humor and are ridiculed by what they
themselves say and do. Much of great literary
satire is indirect.
Elements of Burlesque
• The burlesque elements of Candide are
important for appreciation of Candide’s humor.
However, the contrasts between Voltaire’s
exaggerations and reality of the human
condition—especially at the end, where the
weary, disabused, and dilapidated characters
scarcely promise a vital and virtuous new
society—are more than merely funny in an
ironic way. Candide is a fundamentally
serious work: a satire.