Essays on Comedy

Comedy has a way of making people laugh to certain subject that we struggle with in everyday life. They twist and turn it so that it is comfortable for people to laugh at and enjoy themselves. But what most people don’t know is that these...

There are many texts that deal with the role of the individual male in society; their positions are discussed politically, socially and personally. However, in-depth discussion of the individual female role in society is often lacking during the Restoration period. Women are props, background objects,...

It does not seem a viable course of action to try to apply our modern developed ethics to a 16th Century mindset such as that which yielded Jonson’s The Alchemist. For example, as a civilisation would all at the very least, feel uncomfortable taking Kastril’s...

Through his work, A Mad World, My Masters, Thomas Middleton challenges the viewer’s perspectives on adultery by portraying it as comical, rather than starkly reproachable. During the first four acts of A Mad World, My Masters, the play seems to encourage the audience to support...

Anton Chekhov fought with the famed Stanislavsky over staging his play The Cherry Orchard as a tragedy. According to Chekhov, the play about a well-to-do family forced to surrender its home and orchard to a man who began life as a mere serf on their...

Patrick Hamilton represents women in such a misogynistic manner in Hangover Square that we do not get insight on a single positive portrayal of a woman that George, the novel’s protagonist, meets on his journeys. Instead, we only hear a remotely positive attitude about a...

Wake up, have a cup of coffee, and put on some makeup before walking out the door for the first time in twelve hours. The day ends with a phone call from a loved one as the makeup comes off and the sweatpants go on...

Deception and disguise, classic elements of comedy, are found in both William Wycherly’s The Country Wife and Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers. These devices rely on gaps of knowledge between different characters, or between characters and the audience, of a person’s true identity, but the...

In both Le Barbier de Seville and Le Mariage de Figaro, Beaumarchais uses a variety of comic techniques, such as the parodying of existing forms, comedy of intrigue, satire and farce. However, Beaumarchais’ comedy is interweaved with more serious, and often tragic overtones, which often...

Raja Tarun, the young heroine who is struggling with successive flops, has come up with ‘Lover’. The film is directed by Dil Raju Banner and the film is set to become a director with Anish Krishna, who is the director of the hit film. Let’s...

Here are ten deeply moving coming of age stories listed in no particular order. Starting off at #1 is “Rabbit Cake” by Annie Hartnett. A tragicomedy on grief and healing, this book tells the story of Elvis Babbit, a young girl who recently lost her...

In the beginning, there was….well, depending on how far back in the beginning you want to go, the first situation comedy depiction most likely was animated storytelling around a fire in a cave at dinnertime, with a captive audience, exhausted from a long day of...

Born A Crime is a humorous and serious memoir by Trevor Noah. The book begins in South Africa, where Noah is from, under apartheid, and continues throughout his childhood and adolescence, as South Africa rid itself of apartheid. Trevor and his mother go to church...

The French Neoclassical Era was a time period that stood out to me throughout this semester. After researching Tartuffe further, I found that weakness and blindness were driving forces in the play and wanted to explore each character’s role in those flaws. It is human...

“Tartuffe or The Impostor” is one of Moliere’s most famous plays, which premiered in 1664, but remains popular to this day. The name Tartuffe became a household name, denoting a deceiver, a prude, a hypocrite. Moliere is an outstanding satirist, a talented poet, but in...

In Tartuffe by Molière, the hypocrisy of Tartuffe has completely confused Orgon. Although Orgon’s family has seen Tartuffe’s true face and try to hinder Orgon. But due to being so devout and obsessed, Orgon almost sabotaged his family. The first reason that Tartuffe can easily...

Moliere has written a Tartuffe play comedy that reflects the fact of human nature. The author clearly portrays the nature of the characters and especially Orgon and Tartuffe. Through this, we can find the two main reasons why Tartuffe can easily manipulate and exploit Orgon....

William Shakespeare attained literary immortality through his exposition of the various qualities of human nature in his works. Such works include the romantic comedy, “The Merchant of Venice”, which displays the deliberate use of deception. This human quality is a tool utilised for many purposes...

Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’, a tragicomedy written in the 1960s, is a play that is a continuation of ‘Hamlet’, which expounds the events faced by both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern upon their arrival to England. The play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ is...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) by Tom Stoppard is a play about identity, and understanding one’s sense of self. At some point in our lives, we were all confused about who we were. We questioned what we want to be when we grow up,...

Bertolt Brecht was born in Germany in 1898, were he was raised in a middle-class family. Had strong social and political views in which he believed, while he discovered his love of the theatre and began to write his own plays finding the perfect place...

The excerpt entitled “Shame” by means of Dick Gregory paints a correct photograph of the lifestyles of a typical black infant, and how his circle of relatives struggled just to continue to exist. Gregory remembers a time in his existence when he was in essential...

Sex and sexuality as historical constructs acquired new meanings in the Restoration, with them becoming the essential components of the economy of exchange. Situated amidst the popular libertine culture, the ideals of love, virtue and more importantly, the image of the woman was being redrawn,...

Throughout Wycherley’s play The Country Wife, characters reverse the time period’s normal power dynamics of reputation and gender to create power from a state of powerlessness. While certain characters appear to be powerful due to their status, honor and reputation, other seemingly powerless characters are...

In England, the Baroque was a partly useful concept when discussing about the Restoration Comedy. The English theatres were closed for 18 years, during the English Civil War and English Commonwealth. They were reopened in the Restoration of Charles II (1660). During this period, the...

If i was asked about my favorite film, i would think for a rather long time about the answer. There are many well-rounded films that are released every week, so choosing best of them would be a complicated task. However, if i was asked to...

Ask someone when they last admitted their feelings to someone, and they will probably give a recent recount. Ask someone what that feeling of love means, and they go silent.Throughout our lives, molded by romantic literature and professor interpretations, we visualize, through rose-colored glasses, the...

“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could only be given to traveling: namely, the strange” – Jane Jacobs. In both The Roaring Girl and The Witch of Edmonton the figure of ‘the other’ emerges through the female characters subversion of normative gender roles....

As a Restoration Comedy humour is central to Wycherley’s play. Like many other Restoration Comedies The Country Wife is characterised by farcical humour that runs throughout the whole play, generated through wit, sexual innuendo and a great deal of dramatic irony. However, Wycherley’s use of...

A musical comedy, “Sweet Charity,” based on [,featured] book by Neil Simon, earned nine Tony awards since its premiere on Broadway over 50 years ago. Originally choreographed and directed by the world-famous Bob Fosse, the musical is centric in the experiences of Charity Hope Valentine—a...