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One of the main types of drama. Refers to a drama characterized by absurdity. It is different from tragedy and drama.

Comedy, as a type of drama, originated in ancient Greece. Its Greek Komoidia (meaning Carnival Musical) consists of Komos (meaning Carnival Team Song) and aeidein (meaning Singing). It originated from the carnival parade in which farmers offered sacrifices to Dionysus during the grape harvest season. The marchers dressed up as birds and animals, sang and danced, and called them Komos. At the beginning of the 7th century BC, the Megara people in Greece turned it into a farce and became the predecessor of comedy. Since then, it has gradually matured as a drama genre, and the great comedian aristophanes was born.

In China, it took about 12 centuries to produce a mature comedy art. But its origin is very early, and its embryonic form can be traced back to the Qin and Han Dynasties. At that time, Nuo was an artist who enjoyed music and dancing. Joining the army, which was popular in Tang and Song Dynasties, was mainly represented by the roles of joining the army and stork. Through funny dialogues and actions, people laugh. In fact, it is also a kind of performance form mainly based on ridicule and humor. It was not until after the Song Dynasty that these forms of performance had complete plot content and produced comedy in the sense of drama.

Aristotle has talked about the characteristics of comedy in Poetics. He thinks that comedy imitates "people who are worse off than us today". The so-called "bad" does not mean "bad" in the general sense, but refers to a form of ugliness, that is, laughter (or funny). Funny things are ugly or innocent things that do no harm to others and will not cause pain. " After him, someone wrote the Outline of Comedy, and drew up the definition of comedy by applying Aristotle's definition of tragedy, emphasizing that "comedy is an imitation of a ridiculous, flawed and quite long action", and its imitation method is "the action of the characters" and "venting these feelings by causing pleasure and laughter". It clearly puts forward the conclusion that comedy comes from laughter, summarizes the most important characteristics of comedy, and is generally accepted by later theorists. However, what caused the laughter and absurdity? It is generally believed that Hegel's view that absurdity comes from contradiction deserves more attention. To sum up, the basic characteristics of comedy are: following the artistic law of funny steps, using all kinds of funny expression techniques and skills, mocking all aspects of drama, such as language, action, the appearance and posture of characters, the relationship between characters, story, etc. So that essence and phenomenon, content and form, desire and action, purpose and means, motivation and effect are contradictory, resulting in funny banter.

Comedy, as an aesthetic category, is ridiculous in nature, which is mainly manifested in comedy and humor. When talking about funny, Chernyshevski said: Ugliness is the root and essence of funny. Ugliness is a negative life value, which has no reason to exist in reality. But when ugliness covers up its true colors with false appearances and tries to show off itself with beauty, ugliness becomes funny. Funny is the deformation of ugliness and the inversion of ugliness and beauty. Contrary to comedy, humor is the transformation of beauty and the inversion of beauty and ugliness. When beauty is turned upside down and twisted into ugliness, it is humor. Self-mockery of shortcomings by those who affirm their intrinsic value can also constitute humor. Funny and humorous are inverted, distorted and deformed values of life, but they are qualitatively different.

As an art form, comedy shows a wide range of life. It can not only express the ugly and decadent things in life, but also eulogize the beautiful things, express gorgeous dreams and ideals, express praise and joy, and reflect the bitterness of life. Because of the attitudes of different objects and artists, comedies have different properties, which endow comedies with different aesthetic attributes and values and divide them into different types.

Satire comedy and humorous comedy Generally speaking, satire comedy is aimed at negative things in social life. The purpose that comedy characters pursue wholeheartedly through activities is either stale, outdated and unreasonable, or the activities they engage in to achieve their goals are illusory. The more active the characters are, the faster the failure of real goals will be. Comic activities that lose historical authenticity and practical significance are funny and can be called satire. For example, Moliere's "The Charm of the Noble" satirizes the vulgar bourgeois nouveau riche trying to admire the lifestyle of the noble upper class; Hypocrites satirize religious worship that has lost any real content. Another example is нв. Nikolai Nikolai Gogol's "Imperial Envoy" refers to the bureaucracy under the dark rule of the czar. In humorous comedy, the purpose pursued by the comedian has its legitimacy, rationality and even lofty and positive significance, but his activities to achieve the goal run counter to his goal, and his behavior just makes his goal fail. Most comedies handed down from aristophanes belong to this kind of comedies, such as Akanai People and Girl Country. Don Quixote, a famous comic figure, left a ridiculous and respectable impression on the world with his weak body and eradicated injustice for the world. Among China's classical operas, Li Kui jy is a successful humorous comedy, and Money Slave is the first satirical comedy in China.

Although cartoon characters are exposed to contradictions and conflicts, the characters themselves are a huge contradiction, but the fundamental feature of cartoon characters is that they have no conscious awareness of this and are completely unaware of their ridiculous situation. They will neither stay out of the world nor doubt themselves. Comedy characters are either keen to pursue their petty profits and reputation, content with their meaningless and worthless gains, or take unrealistic and illusory actions as serious goals, but actually make them empty. Even so, comedy characters will not suffer and will not deeply reflect on themselves. Abagong and his son in Miser have a conflict. When I meet my son again in the future, I take the contradiction between father and son lightly, take it seriously, and study it thoroughly. This is the attitude of a typical comedy character. Comedy characters realize themselves in subjective illusion, realize the reconciliation of contradictions, and think that they dominate the environment and master their own destiny in self-enclosure, so as to enjoy themselves and achieve the harmony of life and the balance of mind. So comedies often have happy endings. But comic happy endings are always fictional and unrealistic, and people can easily see the truth between essence and illusion from the lively harmony. Aristophanes's comedies all have this feature. In the drama Peace, people fished up the goddess of peace from the well, and the desire for peace came true. In The God of Wealth, the bad guys become poor and the good guys become rich because people have cured the blind God of Wealth.

Happy comedies and positive comedies emphasized human values, advocated individual liberation and opposed asceticism, which formed a strong trend of thought during the European Renaissance. In this era, Shakespeare created many comedies, the main purpose of which is to show the free life, the sweetness of life, the happiness of youth and the unrestrained enjoyment. This kind of work can be called a happy comedy. His representative works include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew and so on. The strange scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream constitute a strange atmosphere. Cupid's arrow shot quietly, and the heart of the arrow was blindly impulsive under the encouragement of the magical power of love. The misunderstandings, banter and pranks in Twelfth Night are neither hurtful nor malicious. People just have fun and enjoy the good years. Falstaff written by Shakespeare is called "the most perfect comedy character". He has entered his old age, but he is still doing absurd and stupid things. Although he is poor, he is extravagant. He is both witty and stupid. He used his life to pursue happiness, enjoy himself and teach others to have fun at any time. Such a perfect comedy role will only come into being when the old social relationship is broken and the new social relationship has not yet been established. In the treasure house of world comedies, Shakespeare's happy comedies are unique and occupy a special position.

Positive comedy is different from other comedies. It changes from expressing the negative aspects of life to expressing the positive aspects of life. Laughter is no longer used to criticize people's bad habits, shortcomings and inferiority, but mainly used to praise people's virtue, intelligence and self-confidence. /kloc-in the 8th century, the Italian dramatist C. Gordoni's A Servant and Two Owners, the Shopkeeper, and the French dramatist P. de Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais's The Wedding of Figaro all belong to this category. China Yuan Dynasty opera writer Guan Hanqing's "Saving the Wind and Dust" can also be included in the comedy. In this kind of comedy works, although there are also objects of banter and ridicule, such as the bad habit of the aristocratic first night right in the Marriage of Figaro, the impetuousness and impetuousness of the aristocratic master in Save the Wind, and so on. The theme of the whole play is to show the hero's wit, courage, loyalty to friendship and love, hatred and struggle against evil. China's opera "The Jade Hostel" is a successful comedy. Positive comedy approaches positive drama. If the ridiculousness is weakened, the nature of drama will be enhanced.

Absurd comedy in modern western society, the deepest suffering and death in life, is finally distorted and sent to the upside-down comedy kingdom, which constitutes absurd comedy, or grotesque comedy. In the Return of the Old Woman by F Durham Matt, an elderly and crippled lady returns to her hometown of Julun in order to avenge her lover who abandoned her in her early years. She asked the residents to kill her ex-lover at the expense of donating 654,380 billion pounds to the city of Gulen in violation of humanity. Il finally became a victim of the worship of gold altar. Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a masterpiece of absurd comedy. On the bare desert stage, the characters in the play are doing a series of helpless and inexplicable actions, saying unintelligible words and waiting for Godot. However, Godot didn't come, and he didn't know when he could come, let alone who Godot was, so they had to wait. In this play, the tragic mood in people's hearts has turned into a funny scene, which is used to describe people's embarrassing situation in real society.

Burlesque burlesque comes from French burlesque and Latin farcio. The former means stuffing, or stuffing, and can also be translated into burlesque. Generally speaking, it belongs to vulgaria, that is, it makes people laugh through amusing actions and stupid banter, but it lacks a profound theme. Among them, the characters have only one highly exaggerated feature, and there is no rich personality and psychological analysis. This form of comedy originated from the popular civic drama in medieval France, which was mostly performed by urban craftsmen. Its main purpose is to oppose religious asceticism, mock monks and dignitaries, and praise secular happiness. Among them, the most famous is "Batland farce" (1486), which mainly shows that lawyer Batland swindled the cloth dealer and helped the shepherd boy win the lawsuit with the cloth dealer. Finally, the shepherd boy got rid of the lawyer's blackmail and taught him a lesson. Moliere's comedies also contain some burlesque elements. In China's plays, jokes are often interspersed to make people laugh, which can arouse the interest of ordinary audiences. Later generations often call those dramatic works that win by gag, are full of vulgar banter, caricature the characters, ignore the rationality of the plot and only pursue the external comedy effect as farce.

philology

Bergson, Laughter —— On the Meaning of Funny, China Theatre Publishing House, Beijing, 1980.

Chernyshevski: On the Sublime and the Funny, Chernyshevski Literature, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, Shanghai, 1979.

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