ISBN: 9780217762083

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1913. Not … Plus…

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1913. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... HIGH COMEDY OS COMEDY OF MANNERS Illustrated by Lady Windermere''s Fan By Oscar Wilde SURPRISINGLY little has ever been written upon comedy. Freytag, whose work on The Technique of the Drama, was until recently almost the only one to turn to, ignored comedy completely. As he was a philosophical German, possibly that was providential. In the works of Brander Matthews and William Archer, and in the various collected reviews and criticisms now issued in book form, there are occasional chapters upon this subject; but the authors all seem to make haste to get away from it as quickly as possible. Even when what they say is clever and interesting, they apparently realize that often their distinctions and definitions, however plausible they may sound, are likely to go to pieces in face of a real comedy on a real stage before a real audience. The one book upon the subject which is most thorough in treatment and most brilliant in style is George Meredith''s Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit. But Meredith, in all his works and ways, is caviar to the general; and it is the general who need to know about drama. Moreover, this small volume is less valuable than it otherwise would be, because, though published as an essay, it was written as a lecture; and lecture style, being addressed to the ear rather than to the eye, is apt to be artificially heightened, even when the author is not George Meredith. Comedy is of timely interest, because it is evident that comedic drama of the serious and significant sort is more distinctively the play of the day than tragedy, or the problem play, now somewhat outmoded, or any other dramatic form. Granville Barker, who is today stimulating advanced thought on the drama in England, considers comedy the play of the moment.... Elizabeth Roxana Hunt, Books, Fiction and Literature, Fiction, The Play Of Today; Studies In Play-structure For The Student And The Theatre-goer Books>Fiction and Literature>Fiction, General Books LLC<