San Antonio College Library

How do we identify something as comedy? How does reading a comic text differ from reading other kinds of texts? How does comedy relate to social, cultural, and political issues? From Aristotle to the commedia dell'arte, from Wilde to Albee, this Introduction uses these and many other examples from the vast history and range of the comedy genre to investigate comedy's patterns, characteristics, and mechanisms. Focusing on dramatic texts, the book also...

This text sets out the contemporary theories and practices of comedy together with broader theories of comedy and the major themes they contain. An analysis of the major Shakespearan comedies and factual information about the contemporary scene is included here.

Spanning the centuries from Ben Jonson to John Van Druten, this sparkling procession of prose comedies is calculated to excite in the reader every expression of felicity ranging between sly-cat amusement and the most earthy of belly laughs. Louis Kronenberger, distinguished critic, scholar, and director of this cavalcade, has staunchly refused admittance to any laughless failures of merely historical interest and has included only those plays which...

Jerry Orbach and Jane Alexander created the roles on Broadway in this urban romantic comedy. A vacant apartment with six rooms and a river view is open for inspection by prospective tenants, and among them are a man and a woman, strangers when they meet. As the last to leave, they find themselves locked in and though both are happily married, discover a mutual attraction as they wait out the long night ahead. -- publisher.