In this sense, the art of comedy must have started somewhere, with something, and I would most likely attribute the beginning of comedy to irony. In this play, there is a lot of irony. In our sarcastic and derived world today, ironic humor is more than just a daily experience. It comes as no surprise when we hear comedy in this form, and thus this ironic comedy has lost some of its zeal.
But what we have to do is realize that this story was written so long ago. Over such a long period of time, the art of comedy has had ample time to evolve itself into the slapstick forms we see of it today. In those times, for an upper class person, this could very feasibly been one of the most ironic and complicated love stories that could be thought of. The contemporaries of this time probably didn't tell jokes to each other and make inappropriate remarks that many people of today's world think are hilarious, but instead they resorted to using the irony of living in a seemingly huge world, but how we are continually reminded that our individual worlds are small.
All in all, I believe the people of this time thought this play was funny, and although I wasn't dying laughing when I was reading it, I certainly see where they were coming from.
1 comment:
This is very interesting. Irony is definitely part of comedy. You should do some investigation as to why. What is the history of irony and its function in comedy? What about irony can lend itself to humorous situations? Irony has an etymology-- what is the origin of the word? I'd like to see you think more about this and develop your thinking on this.
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