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The Comic Structure and the Audience

- Comedy is usually defined in tenns of its comic components and their effects on the R- ~ audience. Although the variety of opinions on what is comic makes it difficult to reach a strict ~ formulation of comedy, we can find from the criticism through the ages some essential ~ o- characteristics of the genre. These characteristics help us to build a broad definition that comedy presents laughable and amusing incidents which turn out satisfactorily for the main characters. Comedy often presents such dramatic devices as hwnor, wit, jokes, gags, love scenes, happy endings, and other laughable actions or amusing scenes. These dramatic devices constitute the structure of comedy, exercising a comic effect on the audience when it recognizes incongruity, absurdity, festivity, or a delightful mood produced by the devices. In many comedies written prior to the twentieth century, the comic effect usually relies on humorous characters and much more on the happy ending of a marriage or several marriages. The happy ending is often accompanied by comic resolution in which the comic hero restores order to the play by defeating obstructing characters and establishing a festive society at the end of the play. However, we cannot confme the structure of modem comedy mainly to the happy resolution of the concluding scene. In the twentieth century, comedy tends to rely for the comic effect on the contradictions existing within a modem man who lives in a world ever more absurd and menacing. The audience often finds comic irony in the contractions, which constitutes the main dramatic device of modem comedy.

In stimulating the audience's laughter, comedy often presents a fool, buffoon, braggart, miser, and tricky slave. For these characters behave more ludicrously or eccentrically than the audience. As many critics indicate, the deformity or deviation from norms in the characters' verbal or non-verbal actions evokes the audience's laughter. According to Aristotle, laughter is the audience's response to distorted human behaviors: "comedy is characterized by the ridiculous, which is a subdivision of the category of deformity. What we mean by the ridiculous

CJ is some error or ugliness [in the characters'] distorted [behaviors]" (9). Sigmund Freud finds the -'l 0 comic defonnity in the nonsensical arrangement of words or thoughts: "The meaningless ...9 ~ combination of words or the absurd putting together of thoughts must nevertheless have a

0 "Z ..a '- c£. meaning [in] the joke-work" (129). George Santayana believes that the audience perceives the laughable in the characters' inordinate passions: "Sometimes in the exuberance of animal life a spirit of riot and frolic comes over [the comedian]; he leaps, he dances, he tumbles head over heels, he grins, shouts, or leers .... All this he does hysterically, without any reason, by a sort of mad inspiration and irresistible impulse" (52). All these critics agree that the incongruous as a source of laughter is found in the deviation from the norm in the characters' actions or speeches. I In Moliere's Tartuffe, Orgon and Tartuffe are the source of laughter since these characters' wild impulses toward sex and religion give the audience the comic sense of deviation from human norms. Oliver Goldsmith calls his play, She Stoops to Conquer, "laughing comedy" since the play makes the audience laugh at such ludicrous characters as Marlow, Kate, Tony, and Mrs. Hardcastle. Eugene Ionesco's Jack, or the Submission maintains the comic atmosphere mainly through the presentation of the characters' nonsensical situation full of contradictions and absurdities.

While the audience's laughter is evoked by the characters' incongruous behavior, its feeling of amusement is aroused by the play's plot movement in which the comic hero consistently overcomes his uncongenial environment and triumphs over the hostile world at the end of the play.2 According to Robert B. Heilman, the world of the comic hero is the realm ofhis consistent adaptation to his uncongenial realities: "For comic character, there is one very important implication in viewing the world as primarily the realm of relationships with others, as the actual working out of situations by participants who face each other with difficulties and differences to adjust, cross-purposes to reconcile, clashing interests and intentions to be mediated" (146-47). Enid Welsford agrees on the comic hero's adaptability: although the fool or clown is primarily a butt or laughing-stock, he is "none the worse for the slapping .... The elasticity of the fool is one of his chief attractions" (318-19). The comic hero may be a miser, clown, braggart, tricky scoundrel, or naive young lover. Ben Jonson's The Alchemist presents two gifted confident men, Subtle and Face, who pose as alchemists in order to capitalize on the credulity of a group who believe in the ability of alchemists to transform base metals into gold. When eventually exposed, these two rascals escape although they are forced to leave behind their booty. In Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine wins a girl's hand over the uncongenial environment. In Shaw's Major Barbara, Undershaft gets his own way to the ideal society. In any case, the comic hero usually overcomes his hostile environment without being "significantly troubled by inner splits" (Heilman 149), the seriousness of which might undercut the play's amusing atmosphere and discourage the audience's delighted engagement in the comic hero's fight with the uncongenial world. Within this amusing plot movement, even a slightly incongruous behavior on the part of the characters can evoke the audience's violent laughter.

Comedy can then be defmed as dramatic presentation which aims to arouse laughter and amusement in the audience and which usually ends happily for the chief chamcters. Keeping in mind that laughing and amusing scenes constitute the main devices of comic structure. we will not be surprised by the fact that almost all critics try to explain the comic in terms of laughter or amusement. Among these critics. Susanne Langer and Henri Bergson offer insightful concepts on comic structure: Bergson finds the comic in the laughable incident of mechanized human condition. and Langer finds it in the amusing movement of vital human life. If we incorporate these two theories into the single idea of the whole structure of comedy. this incorporation will give us a useful tool for understanding the dramatic genre which aims to arouse laughter and amusement in the audience.

In "Laughter" (1900). Bergson explains that human life is adaptable. When a human being goes out and encounters the uncongenial world. he tries to adjust himself to the obstacles he encounters. However. a machine does not overcome the difficulties the way a human being does. For a machine is rigid and unadaptable. Bergson then applies the rigid image of a machine to adaptable human life: "What incited laughter was the momentary transformation of a person into a thing.... The comic is that side of a person which reveals his likeness to a thing. that aspect of human events which. through its peculiar inelasticity. conveys the impression of pure mechanism. of automatism. of movement without life" (332). Bergson believes that the mechanization of human life creates the comic sense of eccentricity and evokes the audience's laughter (332).

Like Bergson. Langer thinks that human life is not mechanical but vital and adaptable. In "The Comic Rhythm" (1953). Langer applies that this conception of adaptable hwnan life to the comic rhythm of the hero's consistent victory over his hostile realities: when an organic creature is out of balance. it "struggles to retrieve its original dynamic form by overcoming and removing the obstacle, or if this proves imoossib1e. it develops a slight variation of its typical fonn and activity and carries on life with a new balance of functions--in other words. it adapts itselfto the situation" (68). This dvnamic movement produces a joyous feeling in human life. Likewise. the dynamic rhythm of the hero's repetitious adaptation evokes the audience's joyous sense of life in comedy.

In explaining the comic, Bergson and Langer differ in their emphasis on either one of the comic effects, laughter or amusement. Bergson explains that the audience's laughter is discharged by the recognition of "mechanical arrangement" of human life (332). Bergson emphasizes the comic effect of laughter which comes from the sense of deviation from human norms. On the other hand, Langer emphasizes the comic effect of amusing feeling which is produced by the recognition of the hero's successful attempts to shape "the uncongenial world .. . to his own fortunes" (73). These two theorists seem to disagree on a striking point in the sense that, while Bergson explains that laughter is evoked by the mechanized, maladjusted situation of human life, Langer explains that a joyous feeling is aroused by the vital, adaptable situation of human life. However, when applied to the large issue of the plot structure of a whole comedy, the difference of the two critics' comic theories on laughter and amusement is apparent rather than real. As Northrop Frye indicates, the typical comic structure presents the plot movement from a society of restriction and maladjustment to another society of adaptation and freedom. Illuminated by the view of this comic structure, Bergson's emphasis on the mechanized or maladjusted human life minimizes the second half of the plot movement--an adjusted and restored equilibrium. Likewise, Langer's emphasis on the adjusted human life minimizes the first half of the plot movement--initial unbalanced human life. "Just as Bergson on the one hand minimizes adaptation, so Langer on the other hand minimizes the initial maladjustment" (Colwell45). Without doubt, Bergson's theory is concerned with the episodic structure of laughable scenes, and Langer's theory is concerned with the joyous movement of the hero's continuous victory over obstacles. For the whole structure of comedy, "both the initial maladjustment and the adaptation are necessary" (Colwell45-46). The combination of these two critics' theories then produces a theoretical basis for evaluating the structure of a comic play which presents laughable incidents and amusing scenes. It is Greek New Comedy that shows a prototype of the comic structure with joyous movement and laughable episodes which are identified by Langer and Bergson. Although Aristophanes wrote many comedies before Menander, it is Greek New Comedy ofMenander that has exercised a strong effect over a Roman playwright, Plautus, and later playwrights. The comedies ofMenander and Plautus usually arouse laughter and amusement in the audience by presenting episodic elements of incongruity in the characters' behaviors and by showing a joyous rhythm of the hero's triumph over his hostile reality. The plays of these two playwrights often deal with the theme of young love, in which the plot and characters are of the essence. The plot of these two playwrights' comedies usually presents "the dilemma of a young lover" (Goldberg 127), either the exemplary or spendthrift type, kept from his beloved by a greedy pimp, an old father, or a wealthy rival, who is sometimes stubborn or sometimes liberal. A clever slave or parasite, who is the major source of laughter, often contrives "elaborate intrigues to unite the [young] lovers" (Goldberg 127), dupes the old man, and enables the hero to win his girl over opposition. The recognition or revelation of the young lover's true identity--noble or wealthy-­ also often prepares for his winning the girl over opposition. Consequently, love, intrigue, recognition, revelation, a marriage, and a happy ending constitute the play's comic rhythm which creates and maintains the play's amusing mood. Within this amusing mood, the audience often laughs at such elements of incongruity as a folly, a mistaken identity, a false assumption, a deliberate deception, an excessive miserliness, extreme misanthropy, or such verbal or physical humor as sarcasm, a witty retort, an extravagant caricature, and occasional obscenity. These comic elements of incongruity are often fotu1d in such characters as a fool, clown, scotuldrel, tricky slave, self-serving parasite, old miser, or misanthrope.

Menander's Dysco/us (317 B.C.) and Plautus' Mercator (206 B.C.) show the plot movement and character types described above. In Dyscolus, Sostratus, a rich young man, falls in love with a girl whose father, Cnemon, is obsessed with greed and inhumanity in his pursuit of material goods. When Sostratus helps Cnemon's son, Gorgias, to rescue the old grouch who has fallen into a well, Cnemon allows the young lover to marry his daughter after he realizes the "mistake of [his misanthropic] self-sufficiency" (Menander 84 ). The play ends with the festivities for the double wedding of Sostratus and Cnemon's daughter, and of Gorgias and Sostratus' sister. Mercator deals with a father-son rivalry over a woman. Charinus and his father, Demipho, fall in love with the same girl, Rhodes. They have cross-purposes and hide their feeling to each other. Demipho insists that his son sell the girl to him for his "nice old fellow" (Plautus 11 0); Charinus insists that he also has "a certain nice young fellow" who wants the girl (Piautus 11 0). When Charinus' friend reveals that the girl is in fact Charinus' mistress, the old father yields the girl to his son and is forgiven. As the two plays show, the comic rhythm in the plays ofMenander and Plautus usually moves toward the young lover's winning a girl over the blocking character.

Along with the plot movement toward the young lovers' marriage, the ridiculous behaviors of the characters intensifY a comic atmosphere in Dysco/us and Mercator. In Dysco/us, we find the following ridiculous characters: Cnemon, a hot-tempered, misanthropic blocking character; Daos, a tricky slave who mistakes Sostratus for a city-slicker and who, in the "hope that he will wrench his back" (Menander 54), intrigues a vicious plan that Sostratus should impress Cnemon by working in the fields like a diligent farmer; Getas and Sicon, an insolent slave and a self­ important chef, who mercilessly force Cenmon to go dancing into the wedding festivities. In Mercator, we fmd the following ridiculous characters: Demipho, a lascivious blocking character; Acanthio, a witty slave who, in order to prepare for the uninhibited love of the youths, lies to Charinus' father that Chariuus "purchased [Rhodes] to he [his] mother's maid" (Piautus I 0 I). Here, it should be noted that, as we have seen in Dyscolus and Mercator, the plot pattern of comic rhythm and the comic elements of incongruity intensify the play's comic effect through their interaction rather than through their separate contribution to the comic atmosphere.

Building on Greek New Comedy, Frye formulates the typical structure of traditional comedy in "The Mythos of Spring: Comedy" (1957). According to Frye, laughter and amusement are evoked in the audience by the eccentric behaviors of the characters and the joyous movement of the plot. Frye, borrowing Ben Jonson's term, "humors," explains that the character's ruling passion dominated by one of the "humors" characterizes him as a person of "folly, obsession, hypocrisy, or pride and prejudice" (89). These types of characters give the audience the sense of incongruity and arouse its laughter. Frye then explains that the typical structure of comedy presents a society initially dominated by the obstructing characters, a society restricted by tyrannous rules which keep the young lover from his beloved girl But, at the end of the play, a new society is established, free from the restrictions of the older society, usually describing the young lovers' winning the girls over opposition: What normally happens is that a young man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist

in the plot enables the hero to have his will. In this simple pattern there are several complex elements. In the first place, the movement of comedy is usually a movement from one kind of society to another. At the beginning of the play the obstructing characters are in charge of the play's society, and the audience recognizes that they are usurpers. At the end of the play the device in the plot that brings hero and heroine together causes a new society to crystallize around the hero, and the moment when this crystallization occurs is the point of resolution in the action. (Frye 84)

In a new society, the blocking characters are often reconciled with young lovers, repudiated from the wedding festivity, or converted through the recognition of his error. In emphasizing both laughable incidents and an amusing plot movement, Frye's formulation in a sense incorporates the theories of Bergson and Langer into the single idea of the whole structure of comedy.

The conventional plot movement and character types established by Menander have a strong effect on later plays before the twentieth century--Plautus' and Terence's comedies, William Shakespeare's romantic comedies, Moliere's comedies of manners. According to Frye, these traditional types of comedy usually fall into two categories, either emphasizing the blocking characters or the young lovers:

There are two ways of developing the form of comedy: one is throw the main emphasis on the blocking characters; the other is to throw it forward on the scenes of discovery and reconciliation. One is the general tendency of comic irony, satire, realism, and studies of manners; the other is the tendency of Shakespearean and other types of romantic comedy. (Frye 86) In developing the comic form of romantic love, the play usually orients the audience toward the amusing mood ofjoyous plot movement. William Shakespeare's The Taming ofthe Shrew (1593), The Two Gentlemen ofVerono (1594), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), and As You Like It (1599) follow this kind of the comic form. On the other hand. the play of comic irony relies for its generic effect mainly on the ruling passions of the blocking characters when the passions arouse the audience's laughter throughout the play. The following plays usually fall into this type ofthe comic structure: Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (1552); Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humor (1605) and The Alchemist (1610); Moliere's Tartuffe (1664), The Doctor in Spite of Himself(l666), and The Miser (1668); John Dryden's Marriage a Ia Mode (1672); William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675); Sir George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676); William Congreve's The Way ofthe World (1700); Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773); Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal (1777).

A few modem comedies--Oscar Wilde's The Importance ofBeing Earnest (1895) and Thornton Wi1der's The Matchmalcer (1954)--are written on the basis of the conventional plot pattern and character types. In these kinds of modem comedies, the comic effect usually relies on ludicrous characters and much more on the happy ending. The happy ending is often accompanied by the scene of marriage in which the comic hero restores order to the play by defeating obstructing characters and establishing a festive society of freedom. However, we cannot confine the definition of modem comedy to the happy resolution of the concluding scene. In the twentieth century, comedy tends to depict the main characters as modem men who live in an ever more absurd world. The major comic device ofjoyous plot movement is too idealistic in an ever more menacing society. Arthur Koestler seems to catch this modern sense of comic spirit when he explains that the history of comedy shows "the progress from the comic 'type' to the comic 'character"' (136). Traditional comedies present a type, "a caricature in which exaggeration and simplification of one feature are carried almost to the point of abstraction-the miser, the glutton, the misanthropist, the cuckold, and so forth" (Koestler 136-37). On the other hand, modem comedies reveal a "growing insight into the complexities of human character" (Koestler 37). The generic sources of traditional comedy is no longer convincing in modern world where the deviation from humanity in traditional comedy has become common in our daily life. Consequently, our everyday life has itself become the comic butt in modem world.

In "Whatever Happened to Comedy?" (1962), Richard Duprey also explains that the traditional conception of human norms has lost its meaning as the standard of humanity in modem world. According to Duprey, traditional comedies evoke the audience's laughter by enabling it to "see clearly the incongruity of man's deviations from the norms and natumllaws of a sensible universe11 (Duprey 161 ). However, the great problems of modem society are too dark for the audience's laughter:

The great problems of the century are too grim for our laughter. With the absurdity of these cruel times, the chortle of amusement sounds too much like "the death rattle," and so our prophets of the absurd, Camus, Sartre, Durrenmatt and all the rest, see absurdity. Thus comedy dies as we allow our small fears to mushroom into great ones .... Though we have lost the real comic sense--that of Aristophanes and Moliere--the ability to detect absurdity has not been totally lost today. Though it has clearly passed out of the comic realm where it can inspire true laughter, there is a force somehow comic that can precipitate action from absurdity--from the serious contemplation of human irrationality. Writers like the late Albert Camus and the remarkable Swiss novelist-playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt have manifested that they possess a clear vision of the wor1d's absurdity--its deviation from its very own standards of humanity. (Duprey 162-63)

By depicting the contradictions or absurdities existing within modem man or modem society. modem comedies enable the audience to see through its own contemporary problems.

In traditional comedy, the plot movement shows an interactive succession of laughable and joyous elements, which evokes in the audience correspondingly a succession of interactive effects, cheerful and amusing. The joyous plot development functions as an essential element for the play's generic effect in the sense that it not only creates comic feelings in the characters but comic significance which the audience, throughout the plot development, gives to the characters' ironic situation. In An Enemy ofthe People, the comic effect comes from the audience's recognition of the ironic discrepancy between human truth and scientific truth, which Dr. Stockmann never realizes. Dr. Stockmann discovers the pollution of the mineral baths in his country and remains firm in his impractical belief that his scientific truth is absolutely valid for leading his community into accepting the poiJution of the waters, into denying social hypocrisy, and therefore into giving up their livelihood. In The Wild Duck, the comic effect comes from the audience's recognition of the ironic situation, in which Gregers' attempt to satisfy his craving for truth ridiculously brings about disaster for other people. In Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, although the main characters want to escape from their abominable situation or debate great schemes for overcoming their frustrating circumstances, they do not make any practical or meaningful step toward doing so. The audience laughs at the comic discrepancy between their hopes and actions. In Major Barbara, the comic effect comes from the audience's perception of the contradictory idea that two opposite driving forces, Barbara's religious morality and Undershaft's tainted money, are required for the construction of an ideal society. In Heartbreak House, the comic effect comes from the audience's perception of the irony that the main characters have no visible purpose in living but that, ridiculously and deplorably, these people make up the governing classes. Jack, or the Submission maintains the comic atmosphere when the audience perceives the characters' nonsensical situation in which their conversations are full of cliches, contradictions, and repetitions. Although this play presents young lovers, Jack and Roberta II, the eccentricity of the young love intensifies the absurdity of the characters' situation rather than creates an amusing romantic mood. For Jack likes Roberta II because she has three noses, but Jack is not fully satisfied with her because she is not homely enough. The Chairs invites the audience's perception of comic contradiction in the old couple's life. Throughout the play, the old couple, without realizing their present lapse into an empty course of life, participate in nonsensical conversations, replete with baby talk, senile stammers, and cliches which are often inconsistent with the old couple's subsequent actions. These nonsensical conversations embody the play's most recurrent comic devices, provoking laughter in the audience.

Consequently, in these kinds of modem comedies. the traditional criterion that the comic should not involve any painful feelings on the part of the audience is not effective any longer.3 also produces the same comic effects in the audience. As the plot unfolds the scenes of love, intrigue, revelation, reversal, and a happy ending, the plot engages the audience's responses of expectation, recognitio~ and delightfulness. In modern comedy, the traditional criterion of cheerful laughter has disappeared on the part of the audience. Most often, modem comedy presents by means of comic techniques the absurd situation of human irrationality in the modern world. The comic presentation of the irrational situation is usually achieved through such devices as irony, incongruity, contradictio~ and absurdity. In modern comedy, the characters may hope to change their absurd situation or circumstances, but their subsequent actions are often incongruous with their hopes or thoughts. While the characters remain unaware of the incongruity between their thoughts and actions, the audience recognizes the ignorance as well as the incongruity. The audience responds with laughter to the comic incongruity between the characters' thoughts and actions. Since the plot develops revolving around the characters' ironical situation in the whole course of the play, irony constitutes the main generic framework in modem comedy.

Modem comedies such as Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy ofthe People (1883) and The Wild Duck (1884), Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchord (1904), George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1905) and Heartbreak House (1919), and Eugene Ionesco's Jack, or the Submission (1950) and The Chairs (1952) present contradictions existing within modem man or modern society. Unlike traditional types, some of these plays present the death of one of the main characters at the end of the plays: Hedvig's death in The Wild Duck, Tuzenbakh's death in Three Sisters, the old couple's death in The Chairs. However, the physical death does not qualify the plays' endings as tragic catastrophes in the traditional sense because the tragic sense of suffering or a downfall is reduced by the plays' general tone of comic irony. Although some of these modem plays present the main characters' young love or marriage at the end of the plays (the young love ofTrofunov and Anya in The Cherry Orchard, the expected marriage of Cusins and Barbara in Major Barbara, and the bizarre love of Jack and Roberta II in Jack, or the Submission), this presentation does not qualify the plays' endings as joyously comic because the traditional sense of order restored is reduced by the plays' dominant tone of undercutting irony.

The comic effect of these modem plays does not deoend on a plot movement toward a happy or unhappy conclusion. Instead, these plays belong to comedy mainly because of the The audience's laughter in modern comedies is no longer evoked in the mood of delightful feelings.4 Instead, the ridiculous is mixed with a tragic sense of life. and the audience's laughter involves a painful recognition of rather than a delighted engagement in the comic. This recognition indicates that laughter involves the audience's perception that the ridiculed should be corrected and thus involves the audience's intellectual clarification towards the seriously ridiculed in modem comedies.

The idea that laughter engages the audience's intellectual clarification has already been suggested in Aristotle's Poetics. According to Aristotle, comedy arouses the audience's '"indignation' (nemesan) we feel in regard to those incidents of unjustified good fortune and those examples of inappropriate and incongruous behavior in human existence" (Golden 288). When the audience laughs at the abnormal human behaviors, its laughter involves its critical attitude and intellectual contemplation towards the comic abnormality, "imposing silence on [its] emotions" (Bergson 330). This critical contemplation helps the audience to see its own follies and to recognize that these faults should be corrected.5 Since the audience is intellectually purged through laughter in the process of the contemplation, laughter indicates the audience's intellectual catharsis.6

The description that modem comedy engages the audience in the serous contemplation does not mean that traditional comedies do not engage the audience in the critical attitude. In traditional comedies, the comic effect of amusement leads the audience to its emotional identification with the joyous feeling of the characters. On the other hand, laughter invites the audience to the critical superiority over the object of laughter. Thus in traditional comedies, laughter indicates the audience's intellectual involvement with the characters' inappropriate behavior, whereas amusement indicates the audience's emotional engagement in the plot movement.? However, the audience's critical engagement in traditional comedies is often undercut by its feeling of amusement produced by the joyous plot movement.

In contrast, the audience's laughter in modem comedy is no longer detachedly cheerful in the traditional sense. For the audience can laugh at man's absurd situation in the modern world and view it as basically funny while identifying the awful situation with its own. The audience is kept at intellectual distance by the surprising recognition of how closely the characters' situation resembles its own in the modem world. The audience is therefore engaged in intellectual responses to the characters' situation. Consequently, modem comedy, often titled as "sick,"

~ "dark," or "black," tends to stand on the edge of the mixed realm of the comic and the tragic, ~ x entering the realm oftragicomedy.8 This mixed genre is what happens to the following notable -.. modem comedies: Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy ofthe People, Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, -a-'"' George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House, Friedrich Durrenrnatt's The Visit, Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in &arch ofan Author, Jules Romains' Knock, Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad ... , Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Eugene lonesco's Bald Soprano, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, and Edward Albee's The American Dream.

The Man ofMode (1676) by Goorge Etherege.

With consummate skill, the London gallant Dorimant juggles the affections of three women: his morbidly jealous mistress Mrs. Loveit, whom he wishes to drop; the vivacious Bellinda, his new mistress; and the fresh, unspoiled Harriet, who has recently arrived form the country to marry Bellair, Dorimant's friend, but who falls in love with Dorimant at first sight. Bellair arrives on

the scene determined to marry Emili~ with whom his father falls in love on the assumption that his on will marry Harriet as planned. Now Sir Fopling Flutter, the ridiculous epitome of Gallic affectation and the first fop in Restoration comedy, makes his appearance, newly returned from Paris with all the latest fads and fashions. The resourceful Dorimant uses him as a pawn in his battle of wits with Mrs. Loveit, pretending to be insulted when she flirts with Sir Fopling to make her lover jealous. The comedy ends with intimations of Dorimant's future marriage to Harriet, Bellair's imminent marriage to Emilia, and Bellinda's satisfaction at preserving her reputation despite the near discovery of her affair with Dorimant. From Encyclopedia of World Drama

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