Part IV, Chapter 22: The Comic Vision: Restoring the Balance

The pattern of action, traditionally called the plot of intrigue or intrigue plot, stems from the stratagems that young lovers undertake to overcome the blocking agent, so that the outcome frequently heralds the victory of youth over age and the passing of control from one generation to the next.

Comedy as a genre involves patterns of humorous or comic situations and actions that make up a complete and coherent story.

In most comedies, the events of the dénouement resolve initial difficulties and allow for the comic resolution, which dramatizes how things are set right at every level of action.

Satiric comedy, like all satire, ridicules vices and follies. Midway between high and low comedy is satiric comedy, which is based in a comic attack on foolishness and/or viciousness.

The quintessential type of low comedy is farce, which is derived from the Latin word farsus, meaning "stuffed." Henry Fielding, in the prologue to his 1730 (and 1734) play The Author's Farce, points out that the aim of farce "is but to make you laugh."

With characters of low comedy, of course, there is much tomfoolery and improvisation—the major qualities of the extreme form of farce, slapstick, which is named after the double paddles ("slap sticks") that made loud cracking noises when actors in the commedia dell'arte used them for striking each other.

Other types of modern and contemporary comedy include ironic comedy, realistic comedy, and comedy of the absurd. All of these shun the happy endings of traditional comedy.

Other types of modern and contemporary comedy include ironic comedy, realistic comedy, and comedy of the absurd. All of these shun the happy endings of traditional comedy.

Other types of modern and contemporary comedy include ironic comedy, realistic comedy, and comedy of the absurd. All of these shun the happy endings of traditional comedy.

(Will Herman get along with a visiting business associate? Will Sue be accepted by schoolmates at her new school? Will Jim get a date for the prom?) Such situations find their ways into the huge numbers of sitcoms (situation comedies) that occupy considerable space on prime-time television programming.

The musical play was first known as ballad opera; later it was called comic opera; today it is called musical comedy, or simply a musical.

The Beggar's Opera was also a burlesque that satirized the Italian operas so popular in the early eighteenth century. Henry Fielding (1707-54), best known for his later novels, wrote at least nine ballad operas in the mode of The Beggar's Opera, and he also wrote the best of English burlesques, Tom Thumb (1730, 1731).