Comedy of manners

The Critical Idiom

by David L. Hirst

Studies of comedy of manners have tended to concentrate on comedies of the Restoration period or on those of the early twentieth century. This book traces the genre through from the 1660s to the present day, seeing an underestimated subversive potential and socially critical force in this particularly English dramatic form which has found its fullest expression in the late seventeenth century and the twentieth. By emphasizing the subjects and style peculiar to this unromantic comic mode, whose structural tension is seen to reside in a contrast between the ruthless, down-to-earth aims of the characters and their sophistication of manner, a distinction is drawn between comedy of manners as a particular genre and a more generalized concept of witty social satire.David Hirst discusses the major comic dramatists of the post-Restoration period from Wycherley to Farquhar, and reassesses the significance of three important figures, Sheridan, Wilde and Coward. He goes on to examine the continuation of the tradition in the work of three contemporary writers, Osborne, Pinter and Orton, enabling us to view their plays in a new light, and at the same time to reconsider earlier drama outside as well as within the context of its own age.

122 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979