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Comedy in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries
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by Celia Maddox
Educational Consultant
Norwalk, Connecticut
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Seventeenth Century
Index of Molière Articles
A list of articles about Molière that includes analyses of most of the major comedies and plentiful information on the seventeenth century French stage.
 Index of Molière Articles
Masks, Costumes, Ceremony: Life in Seventeenth Century France
A very complete curriculum unit on Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme: abundant background, context, study questions, reading lists. From the Yale-New Haven Teachers' Institute.
Masks, Costumes, Ceremony: Life in Seventeenth Century France
Eighteenth Century/Restoration
Game of Love: Restoration Comedy
"The Game of Love" is a competent, plainspoken survey of some of the major Restoration comedies of manners, tracing their concerns from an early emphasis on aristocracy and cuckoldry through an interest in the marriage contract and ending up with the moral uplift of eighteenth-century sentimental comedy. Summaries of plays by Wycherly, Etherege, Congreve, Behn, Farquar, and Sheridan (in five pages) make this a good place to shop for a Restoration play.
Game of Love: Restoration Comedy
Overview: Comedy of Manners
This fairly schematic consideration of comedy of manners as an acting style is a tidy list of conventions and characteristics of the mode. It focuses on the Restoration period but makes useful connections to other periods, including contemporary comedy.
Overview: The Comedy of Manners
Exercises: Comedy of Manners
Interesting acting exercises for students on the techniques of the comedy of manners, or "making the real artificial and the artificial real."
Exercises: Comedy of Manners
Nineteenth Century
Introduction -- The Nature of Laughter
This long excerpt from Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter (James Kincaid, 1971) on the Victorian Web site probably ought to be in the "General" section because, while useful for Dickens and narrative comedy, it has much more to say about theories of comedy and laughter. Terms and concepts such as the peculiar categories "dark-laughter theorists" and "genial-laughter theorists" are hyperlinked to brief explanations of the references. The Works Cited is a good bibliography of the literature on laughter.
Introduction -- The Nature of Laughter
Teaching Comedy in Jane Austen's Works
This sample syllabus for a two-week unit called "Teaching Comedy in Jane Austen" is just right for AP. It focuses on the juvenilia and Emma, with references to the films of Austen's work, and includes writing assignments, discussion questions, and a reasonable reading list.
Teaching Comedy in Jane Austen's Works
Twain: An American Humorist
"Mark Twain: American Humorist" is the title of this lesson plan and as the title implies, the plan tries to cover too much. Sections could be borrowed or recast, however, for a good emphasis on satire, irony, and humor.
Twain: An American Humorist
Huck Finn in Context: A Teaching Guide
This teaching guide for Huckleberry Finn, which uses a film from the PBS series Culture Shock to explore controversial aspects of the novel, focuses a good deal of attention on Twain's use of irony and satire.
Huck Finn in Context: A Teaching Guide
"Wit, Humour, and the Tradition of the English Novel"
"Wit, Humour, and the Tradition of the English Novel" is a short essay that touches on Fielding, Dickens, Austen, and more. It is particularly interesting for its explanation of wit.
"Wit, Humour, and the Tradition of the English Novel"
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