High Comedy

Characteristics

Conventionally, high comedy appeals to the intellect and low comedy to an unconscious laughter reflex. Many attempts at definition focus on this aspect, as does George P. Baker (1925) in an early study of Shakespearean comedy: “High comedy in contrast to low comedy rests … on thoughtful appreciation contrasted with unthinking spontaneous laughter” (p. 236). Like high art, high comedy accepts a responsibility to stimulate its audience to critical reflection, although neither high nor low comedy is truly didactic in purpose. That is the proper province of satire—although comedians will often claim in their own defense against the charge of being mere entertainers that they expose hypocrisy and ridicule comic faults in order to correct them.

The two different styles are probably innate to comedy. Both low buffoonery and elevated comic debates can be found in classical Greek drama and [Page 286]in epic poetry such as Homer's Odyssey. There are extended riddle contests of wit in Irish and Norse sagas and elegantly amusing verbal duels between hero and heroine in Sanskrit drama and the Chinese operas of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). However, the Greek New Comedy of Menander (?344/343–292/291 BCE) is regarded as the first example of high comedy, as distinguished from the “mixed” style of earlier Aristophanic satirical fantasies. Menander's comedies combine stock type-characters lacking self-awareness with an exploration of more complex human feelings, showing that “the playwright's interests are in character and the chances with which it has to contend” (Tierney, 1930, p. 305).

Unlike low comedy, high comedy takes account of stylistic rules. Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie (1595) criticized his contemporaries (including Shakespeare) for regarding laughter as comedy's prime purpose and for disregarding the rules set down for comedy by Aristotle in his Poetics (specifically the classical unities of time, place, and action). Meanwhile in Italy and Spain, under the rubric of commedie erudite (learned comedies), contemporary Renaissance authors (especially aristocratic ones) were reinventing the classical model of comedy supposedly set out by Menander and his Roman followers. Opposed to this (high) comedy was the low commedia dell’arte, written and performed by skilled professional players who invented their own rules.

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