One of the major distinctions is between high comedy and low comedy is recognized as that which evokes “intellectual laughter,” usually through combats of wit and humor. Low Comedy is that which evokes “belly laughs.” The main devices of low comedy are jokes, gags, slapstick humor, and boisterous,clownish physical activity.
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is a perfect example of High Comedy. The main characters come from the Upper Class society of English and the main couples are aristocratic in nature.
The play centers around how the Upper Class views potential mates and marriage in general. Love interests are shallow, sentimental and at times farcical in an intellectual depiction.
Much of the script embeds witty utterances and exchanges throughout the play, thus evoking comedy in which the audience should find amusing, entertaining and pleasurable.
This is opposed to Low Comedy, which tends to focus on giving the audience a bellyful of laughs at the expense of other characters, animals, inanimate objects and even the audience itself.
The Importance of Being Earnest does not include the audience in portrayal and uses the fourth wall as a way for the audience to ‘look in.’
Although the play has elements of farce with a light dramatic composition marked by broadly satirical comedy and improbable plot, it does not suppose to be boisterous, slapstick or vulgar to get laughs.
The audience is to experience a depiction of how others see the Upperclass and the stereotypical ways in which characters are utilised and portrayed.
The genius of William Shakespeare, the middle class playwright from Stratford upon Avon, is the sublime ability to mix both high and low comedy in the same play.
Read Love’s Labor’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Much Ado About Nothing for examples.
Shakespeare wrote plays which would appeal to his lower class and upper class audiences alike. Imagine standing among the lower class watching a Shakespearean play, throwing tomatoes and hollering at the actors when parts of the play would allow.
Also imagine the hoi polloi sitting in the balcony seats above, judging and forming a holy than thou opinions of those below.
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream is a comedy which is centered around high status couples searching for their true love and inadvertently finding love with the wrong person.
In the mix was a troupe of ‘rude mechanicals’ who were boisterous actors and ‘Puck’ an imp like magical creature who places as asses head on one member of the acting troupe.
With a mixture of the antics of the sentimental and romantic upper crust characters, juxtaposed with the lowly acting troupe where frivolity, excitement and drunkenness abounds.
That is the genius of Shakespeare, catering his plays for all members of society to enjoy and lament.
Modern examples of High comedy
High comedy, a genre distinguished by elegance and wit and intended to appeal to the intellect also includes our more modern forms of entertainment.
Most of the laughs in a comedy of manners are influenced from subtle breaches of high society expectations, and of manners. This type of comedy is generally presented with well-crafted wordplay.
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. This play is a good example of High Comedy. The play features anti Puritan values and had a sexual explicitness even for that era.
She Stoops to conquer is also a great example of High Comedy or Comedy of Manners. This play supposes that lite society allows the the comedy to arise from the gap between the characters’ attempts to preserve standards of polite behaviour and their true underlying behaviour.
Movies Comedy of Manners
Breakfast At Tiffany’s is based on a high class female escort, who flirts with her neighbor.
Emma based on the classic novel by Jane Austen who explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England. A matchmaker, who is secretly wanting love too.
Television Programs
Seinfeld The continuing misadventures of neurotic New York City stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his equally neurotic New York City friends.
Fraser a Radio Psychiatrist who moves back to his hometown and lives with her father. Frasier epitomises a synthesis of upper-class sophistication, yet is still capable of working-class enjoyments.
Commercials
High comedy often uses satire, irony, exposing, deriding, denouncing or vices which are utilized in movies commercials and television programs.
This New Zealand ‘Cheese’ commercial depicts two elderly men talking about issue of having more people, brings more business which evokes a tipping point.
The commercial features the rush of the citylife folk, juxtaposed with the peaceful and nature centred, diary scene in which the two men are situated in eating their cheese and crackers. This is produce derived from the land Their laughter portrays their denouncing temperaments and disdain for the crazy busy life of city-folk near them.
Examples of Low Comedy
Low Comedy seeks to evoke laughs through slapstick humour, pranks, gags and low brow jokes often sexual in nature. This type of comedy tends to appeal to people’s raw, unabashed organic humor. Quick to make people laugh and does not tend to make people think deeply on the issues at hand.
Slapsick humor from Charlies Chaplin to Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy to more modern forms with Jim Carey and is movie Ace Ventura series.
From the Ancient Greeks with their Satyr plays which usually played between the more serious dramatic or epic plays written by playwrights such as Aeschylus and Socrates. The Satyr plays allowed the audience to release pent up tension and relax into the festivals which plays were shown.
They featured choruses of satyrs, were based on Greek mythology. They were rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality (including phallic props), pranks, sight gags, and general merriment.
Other examples of low comedy include There are plenty of examples of low comedy include slapstick in the early silent movies which starred Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
The humor usually brings about belly laughter in a spontaneous manner, where the audience doesn’t have to truly think deeply on the matter.
Great low comedy plays involves the work of clowns, comedians and and mimes. Clowns tend to use physicality and bawdy humour to make an impact. With their painted happy and or sad faces explains exactly what they are about.
Of course stand up comics if they are worth their salt, operate between high and low brow humour. Depending on the comic, they can successfully perform both sophisticated and low brow humour depending on the circumstance. Exaggerated facial expressions, funny walks are examples of low brow.
Low comedy appeals very well to young audiences, especially children. From the showing bearing the bellies to the patting of the butt to the ‘accidental’ falls and trips. Children love to laugh at obvious circumstances which go awry.
A good example of low comedy, where the thinking is done for us.
Farce as low comedy
Farce is a type of comedy which involves characters using script and inserting more than what is required. The Farce of a show seems to take on a life of its own without the guidance of the writer. Jokes, gags or pranks are often thought of as farce in a show.
Low Comedy and High Comedy have distinct characteristics which have defined them throughout the Centuries regarding the history of theater. All types of comedy are produced to amuse or make an audience laugh. And all comedy has their place.
If you are thinking of researching a specific type of comedy for a skit, group exercise of performance of some kind, do try and use some of the ideas from this page to help. Comedy is brilliant in allowing people to escape from their lives and let the sunshine in.
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