Comedy of Ideas (high comedy):
1. Characters argue
about ideas like politics, religion, sex, marriage.
2. They use their
wit, their clever language to mock their opponent in an argument.
3. This is a subtle way to satirize people and institutions like political parties, governments, churches, war, marriage.
Comedy of Manners (high comedy):
1. The plot focuses on amorous intrigues among the upper classes.
2. The dialogue
focuses on witty language. Clever
speech, insults and ‘put-downs’ are traded between characters.
3. Society is often
made up of cliques that are exclusive with certain groups as the in-crowd,
other groups ( the would-be-wits, desiring to be part of the witty crowd), and
some( the witless) on the outside.
Farce(can be combination of high/low comedy):
1. The plot is full
of coincidences, mistimings, mistaken identities.
2. Characters are
puppets of fate—they are twins, born to the wrong class, unable to marry, too
poor, too rich, have loss of identity because of birth or fate or accident, or
are (sometimes) twins separated , unaware of their double..
Low Comedy:
1. Subjects of the humor consists of dirty jokes, dirty gestures, sex, and elmination.
2. The extremes of
humor range from exaggeration to understatement with a focus on the physical
like long noses, cross eyes, humped back and deformities.
3. The physical
actions revolve around slapstick, pratfalls, loud noises, physical mishaps,
collisions—all part of the humor of man encountering an uncooperative universe.