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Unit 3: Literary Terms: Comedy of Manners, Absurd Theatre, and Existentialism

Revenge; or, Love in a Tub (1664) and She Would If She Could (1668) are often seen as inaugurating the Notes
genre of the comedy of manners, and his characters, including Sir Frederick Frollick and Sir Fopling
Flutter, were favorites with audiences and became standard character types.
The Restoration period heralded an exciting and boisterous period in theatre after theatres were
closed by the Puritans and Commonwealth government between 1642 and 1660 (due to Cromwell).
Charles II was a fun loving, woman loving and theatre loving king and it was under his reign that
drama flourished once more. Audiences were predominately from aristocratic backgrounds. The
Restoration period was noted for its comedies although more serious drama was produced by writers
such as John Dryden and Thomas Otway.
The comedy of manners can be witnessed in ancient form in the plays of Menander from the New
Comedy of the Greek theatre in the fourth century BC and then in the work of Roman writers
Plautus and Terence.
The English comedy of manners began with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and then can be
seen at its best in Restoration comedy and in the work of Wilde, Shaw and Pinero. In more recent
times, work by Coward, Orton and Rattigan encaptured the elements whilst in more modern day
drama, Neil Simon and Edward Albee provide worthwhile examples.

3.1.2 Definition of the Comedy of Manners
The comedy of manners is a style of comedy that reflects the life, ideals and manners of upper class
society in a way that is essentially true to its traditions and philosophy. The players must strive to
maintain the mask of social artifice whilst revealing to the audience what lies behind such manners.
In other words it is to make: The real artificial and the artificial real. It is characterised by a flamboyant
display of witty, blunt sexual dialogue, boudoir intrigues, sensual innuendos, and rakish behaviour.
The following conventions governed the comedy of manners in restoration period:
• Constancy in love (especially in marriage) was boring;
• Sex should be tempting;
• Love thrived on variety;
• Genuine sexual feelings had no place on stage;
• Characters clashed with each other in situations of conflicting love entanglements and intrigues
• Country life was considered boring;
• Clergy and professional men were treated with indifference or condescension.

In modern day sit-coms The Comedy of Manners include the English shows,
Keeping up Appearance, Steptoe and Son, Fawlty Towers (Sybil), Birds of a Feather
(Dorian), Men Behaving Badly, Ab Fab. From the US notable shows include The
Odd Couple and Frasier.
A Comedy of Manners is a play concerned with satirizing society’s manners. A manner is the method
in which everyday duties are performed, conditions of society, or a way of speaking. It implies a
polite and well-bred behavior. Comedy of Manners is known as high comedy because it involves a
sophisticated wit and talent in the writing of the script. In this sense it is both intellectual and very
much the opposite of slapstick, which requires little skill with the script and is largely a physical
form of comedy. In a Comedy of Manners however, there is often minimal physical action and the
play may involve heavy use of dialogue.
A Comedy of Manners usually employs an equal amount of both satire and farce resulting in a
hilarious send-up of a particular social group. Most plays of the genre were carefully constructed

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