Comedy

The comedy (from the Latin comedia, and this from the ancient Greek κωμῳδία, kōmōidía) is the dramatic genre opposite to tragedy and, therefore, is almost always related to stories with a happy ending. This epicurean reading, pleasant and optimistic, had its origin in the primitive fertility cults in honor of the god Dionysus and developed as a genre derived from the Greek dithyramb, associated with satirical dramas and itself.

In Ancient Greece it reached its maximum splendor with Aristophanes (ancient period) and passed to Roman culture at the hands of Menander (middle period), in the IV. During the Middle Ages it acquired a lighter and more elemental tone, becoming burlesque in many subgenres and becoming a very popular show since in its case it is very special and as in the In the case of the "Commedia dell'Arte", As a global dramatic genre, it defined the set of classical Spanish theater, with the coordinates of the set of the dramatic work of Lope de Vega. It is classified, along with the tragicomedy, as one of the classical forms of Greek drama, and one of the three dramatic genres called realistic.

From the XX century, it became one of the basic genres of the Seventh Art, and in language it has lighting broader expressions such as make comedy or, referring to dramaturgy, author of comedy. Comedy is according to Aristotle:

imitation of inferior men, but not in all the extent of the vice, but in what they have of laughter, for the laughter is a flaw and a fealty not special, since it gives laughter that causes neither pain nor ruin.

Aristotle. Poetry1449a.

From Greece to Rome

The Greek author Aristophanes (444-385 BC) is considered one of the first playwrights, perhaps the purest, due to the eleven works developed from the tradition of satirical drama and with a defined structure in which dialogue and song alternate. But the authentic transformer of the Greek rite into a clear model of what the theater will later be was Menander (342-291 BC) who practically suppressed the presence of the Choir and transferred the dramatic values within the text, thus giving greater participation to the public, which will from then on be a live spectator.

Centuries later, in the Roman theater, comedy generates two different groups, depending on its theme:

• The "fabula palliata, crepidata" or Roman comedy of Greek matter;
• and the "fabula togata, tabernaria", of Roman matter.

Menander's great heir was Plautus, author of some one hundred and thirty comedies, of which twenty-one have survived. Plautus, trained as a clown-mime, incorporated gesture and action into the content of the text, multiplying its comic and dramatic effectiveness.

Phoenix of Comedies

With the Renaissance, comedy became camouflaged, which meant that products of dramatic literature that were little or nothing close to its "comic" and "playful". Good examples of this were the Comedy of Calisto and Melibea, the Divina Comedia and an important part of the dramatic production of the Golden Age (within and without Spain), including the Elizabethan theater, which also received the nickname "comedy" in a generic way, although it was about dramas.

At the Spanish court, the height of comedy between the 16th century and the XVII, is embodied by Lope de Vega, author —according to Juan Pérez de Montalbán— of some 1800 pieces, and of a treatise that he himself Fénix de los Ingenios built on the New art of making comedies in this time (1609). Based on his work and a later contribution by Calderón, up to eight types of comedies would be cataloged by contemporary and later scholars. For example, Narciso Díaz de Escobar includes the classification of the critic Alberto Lista, which includes comedies: of customs, intrigue and love (or swashbuckling), pastoral, heroic (or historical), mythological, Saints and ideals (or philosophical).

In the prologue to Lope's Comedias, Miguel de Cervantes presents it like this:

...then came the monster of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and rose up with the comic monarchy; he overwhelmed and put under his jurisdiction all the farcemakers; he filled the world of his own, happy and well-reasoned comedies, and so many, who spend ten thousand folds what he has written...

Iconography

Of the personifications or iconographic representations of comedy, and beyond the different versions of the muse Talía (a woman with a mask in her hand and sometimes primitive musical instruments at her feet), José Luis Morales and Martín in his Diccionario de iconología y simbología (1984), describes an ancient personification of Comedy as "a matron with a tunic and cloak tucked under her arm, carrying an arrow in one hand; Next to her is a monkey that offers her a basket full of snakes.

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  Talia in a Byzantine mosaic in the hall of the muses of the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes.

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  Talia painted by Timothy Viti at 1500. Galleria Corsini.

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  Talia, musa and teacher of comedians, according to drawing of Hoogstraten (about 1675). University of Nimega (biblioteca).

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  Talia, by Jean-Marc Nattier (1739). San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts.

Features

Like Tragedy, Comedy seeks to provoke emotion in the viewer. But while in the first —in the words of Ramón María del Valle Inclán— the author contemplates his characters as superior forces governed by destiny, in the space of comedy "author and characters coexist, the first as a puppeteer and the second ones like puppets", that even being able to reach grotesque situations, show themselves as free beings, masters of their own destiny and therefore, capable of leading the thread of the plot (sometimes very tangled) towards an outcome happy. That essential freedom that permeates the genre makes comedy the paradise of versatility, surprise, genius, rhythm changes and nonsense.

Some marked and others suggested, since its classical origin some archetypes associated with comedy have been maintained. Thus, its leading characters or protagonists are no longer the tragic heroes —and almost always victims—, but vulgar types with whom any of the spectators can identify. If the tragic character was a slave to his ethics and dignity, the comic character is saved many times thanks to chance rather than his abilities. The modern filmography and comic antiheroes of the XXI century offer child models as forceful as Charlot, Cantinflas or the Marx Brothers in the cinema —or Mr. Bean and The Simpsons on television—, characters as unpresentable as the foolish god Dionysus in The Frogs by Aristophanes or Plautus' "miles gloriosus" in comedy "palliata".

Character, plot and moral

In the popular and diverse gallery of comic characters it is easy to find frequently the liar, the charlatan, the braggart, the mischievous and even the lover, at the same time gullible, unconscious and amoral. As a natural complement, the most common plots are well served with ingredients such as deceit, theft, mockery and fraud.

In its origin, comedy used to exaggerate human vices and defects, with a moralizing and educational intention, and for this it ridiculed those vices or bad customs in order to correct them through laughter or as a preventive method to prevent them from acquired by the viewer. The dramatic treatment of these vices, generally contrary to the social welfare of the community in which the protagonist lives (and associated with the time and place), leads him to transgress that society. In the traditional comedy scheme, his punishment will be ridicule. Thus, for example, in the case of Tartuffe, Molière uses the hypocrisy of the character, the prototype of the prude who pretends to live values that he does not really have and who only pursues his well-being at the cost of the damage he causes to others. the others.

The outcome is happy for the unfortunate, surprising and bizarre. The obstacles that the protagonist will have to overcome throughout the plot, random but optimistic, will finally be overcome by his effort at times and by chance at others. The good guys will win and the bad guys will be punished and ridiculed.

Poetics and structure

Semiologists, critics and dramaturgy theorists have left numerous and sometimes dense analytical documentation on comedy. i> (1996), proposes that the fabulation in which the comedy develops successively goes through the phases of «balance, imbalance, new balance». He defines it —comedy— as a "contradictory perspective of the world"; expressed following pedagogical schemes, and using resources such as the «quid pro quo» or the misunderstanding. The versatility and flexibility of comedy, its natural vocation for 'self-parody' They turn it into a tool and prototype of the so-called theater in the theater.

Types

Various manuals and specialized dictionaries list and define different types of 'comedy', among which we can highlight:

• Ancient Greek comedyThe ancient average has its origin in the AC ageVand was born as a political satire, sometimes violent and sometimes grotesque, and even obscene. His main authors: Aristophanes, Cratés and Cratinos.
• Comedy of bandoleros, genuine product of Spanish theater developed since the end of the centuryXVI with classic examples The one convicted of mistrust of Tirso de Molina or The Devil's Slave Antonio Mira de Amescua.
• Burlesque comedy or "disparates", often around the adventure buffs of an extravagant character.
• Coat and sword comedy associated with the Entanglement Comedy and opposed to the comedy of character. Among the many examples of this kind can be mentioned The steel of Madrid from Lope or The Merchant of Venice Sir William.
• Comedy of episodes or fucka set of short steps or scenes around a common theme or conflict. In classic sexes these brief comic paintings used to mix with other musicals.
• Comedy of figuron, "characters" or "character", with characters whose psychology, carefully drawn, sometimes supplants the need for intrigue or action. It is in line with the English variety called "comedy of smokeurs", in which Ben Jonson and Shakespeare are considered their principal teachers.
• Greek comedy, evaluation of Greek origin according to the contents of the drama with a differentiation between "high average" and "low"; in turn the history of the classic comedy in Ancient Greece is usually divided into three periods of study: the old, the middle and the new.
• Gender comedy associated with calls of customs, "of character" and "of intrigue", had special development during the centuryXIXfrom moralizing or social criticism.
• Comedy of magic, as its name suggests, is starred by all kinds of magical characters, in addition to demons, mythological creatures and profusion of effects and stage machinery. It has also been appointed comedy of apparatus.
• Mythological comedy, as its name indicates with plots starred by pagan gods.
• Black comedy, close to the tragicomedia, with a pessimistic and dark plot that is solved in a happy ending almost always forced, literary or ironic. The black pieces of Jean Anouilh are exemplary.
• New comedy, includes the third stage of Greek classic comedy (siglos IV and IIa. C.)
• palate comedy, wide and undefined subclassification, evaluated from examples such as The Hortelane DogLope, or The shameful in the palace from Tirso.
• It begins with privation, also "drama de privanza" or "comedia de valids", is a specific variant within the genre of patella comedy.
• Pastoral comedy or Pastorildedicated to the idyllic life of the field and with prototypical examples in Lope de Vega (Lovely or The jungle without love). Part of the Italian pastoral comedy that had its summit Aminta Torquato Tasso.
• Roman comedy (also Tabernaria, "touch" or "fabulae togatae"), or Latin comedies of Roman argument. They gave the relay to the comedies of Greek layer (“palliata”), and although in its beginning they ridiculed popular or tavern language, including in the humble arguments of the people, they ended up criticizing the life of the elite (triunfadores and magistrates).
• Living room comedy, or neoclassical comedy, very supported in the intellectuality of the text and very little action. Your best examples: New comedy or coffee of Leandro Fernández de Moratín.
• Comedy of saints or Retablo, heir to the aesthetics and objectives of the medieval cars and mysteries, revolves around the milagreras legends of the components of the Catholic saintland.
• A sentimental comedy, a product of the Enlightenment derived from the "larmoyant commune"; usually a moralist attempt from the critique 'sentimentaloide' of social or personal vices.
• Comedy of situation or "of situations", starting from The comedy of the mistakes of Shakespeare, as one of his oldest models, presents a vertiginous succession of theater blows, misunderstandings and surprises, chained without excessive dramatic rigor.
• satirical comedy, in the classical theater very associated with the work of Molière and works like Tartufo, The avaro or The imaginary sick, shamelessly ridicule the vices or defects of a particular individual or institution.

Other variants and denominations

The following have also been catalogued: the comedy-ballet; the comedy 'de cuerpo' (by Luis Velez de Guevara); the heroic comedy (with great examples such as The best mayor, the king; the polite comedy, the seraphyna comedy and the comedy thebayda (tragicomic variants associated with La Celestina).

Other denominations that do not respond to the content of the drama or its style but to circumstances external to the genre, are for example the alms comedy (for representations that were made for charitable purposes) or the curtain comedy typical of the old comedy theaters, when the company representing it was singularly poor and its scenery consisted of poorly painted curtains. Antonio Machado coined the term cubic comedy, referring to the Italian-style theater space; the poet and playwright proposed a break with that space and the evolution towards a non-Euclidean comedy of 'n' dimensions.

The musical comedy

Sometimes related to musicals and vaudeville, musical comedy (sometimes called boulevard comedy), constitutes, due to its development and evolution, a subgenre with multiple variants in turn, although in essence it descends from the original Greek model. It is considered a child genre of operetta, which developed in the United States and Europe throughout the 20th century. In Spain it gave rise to the popular Spanish musical comedy in synthesis with the Magazine.

The lyrical comedy

Academic name of the musical variant known as género chico, endemic to Spain and developed during the XIX century and part of the XX.

At the movies

The Three Flamed American comic group characterized by its absurd humor and physical comedy.

Typology

• Slapstick, comedy muda founded mainly on the physical dynamism of persecutions, fights, blows and surprises.
• Romantic or loving intercourse: Philadelphia Stories (1941) by George Cukor, The secret of living (1936) by Frank Capra
• the comedy of burlesque gold: The Gold Chimera (1925) by Charles Chaplin.
• Black comedy, in the line of black humor and with a varied spectrum, from prototypes as Arsenic for compassion (1944) to American Beauty (1999).
• Sophisticated comedy, when it approaches the psychology of the characters: Everything he wanted to know about sex and didn't dare to ask Woody Allen (1972).
• Parodies, mock imitations of situations or previous films: the primitive Casino Royale (1967), with Woody Allen and Peter Sellers almost undercover, or The Naked Gun (1988) Zucker.
• animated comedy (cartoon): from classics like the characters created by Tex Avery, or rescued from the comic world (The mask, 1994), to finds like Shrek (2001) or Pixar creations as The Incredible (2004), already within the new digital animation technologies.

On television and in comics

In the television medium, the most frequent variants are the situation comedy (sit-com), the "live comedy" (stand-up comedy) and telecomedy in general and especially in teleseries as a whole.

The "sitcom," of American origin, is the most popular product in the sitcom format. It was designed as a subgenre in the 1950s, with the rise and spread of television as a household appliance after World War II, and two North American CBS productions are usually considered as models: I love you, Lucy (1951-1960) and The Honeymooners (1955-1956). The sit-com is of short duration with episodes that do not exceed 30 minutes, which made it the most suitable television product for the after-dinner (“access prime time”).

• In the graphic medium or graphical publications is represented by the comic comic comic book, and within the oldest and most popular historiethistic genres. Among the best known international examples that define it can be cited Astérix el Galo, Mortadelo and Filemón, Aquiles Talón or the comic strips of Mafalda.