Chapter 5 - Comedy's range

Summary

Dramatic texture and the comic

We have in the past two chapters surveyed signatures of the comic across time and text. We have also observed some general principles of humour and comic performance upon which they might be based. This should not be taken to imply a sameness in all worlds with comic lineage. To the contrary, every world incorporating the comic harbours a singular feeling, owing to its precise mix and use of elements. An essential project of this chapter is to direct the reader toward a more discerning apprehension of the stage world as a whole, and the ways in which comic elements interact with their worldly settings.

We discussed in Chapter 1 the complex means by which we read the world of a work into existence from the page of a novel or play, and the superabundant scope for expression of which genre framing is capable. Each of the dramatic texts to which I have thus far referred in the name of comedy proffers a weave of its own, differentiating itself at a textual level through the specific mingling of historical theatre convention, surrounding culture, theme, tone and the playwright's creative infusion. (There remains, of course, a further indefinable range of meaning and feeling, prior to concretization in actual performance, the comic implications of which I will discuss at the end of this chapter.