Commedia Dell Arte

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Reoccurring traits of Comedy of Manners are in the simplest form witty dialogue, brusque sexual innuendos, and scandalous love affairs or an abundance of risqué behavior. This genre of theatre, also known as Restoration Comedy, did not gain any recognition until after Charles II had ascended to the throne of England in 1660. Plot lines for the most part were not overly complicated, centering on the lives of the upper class society, in some cases for a bit of flare there may be a case of mistaken identity thrown in the mix. Something that could closely relate in modern terms is consider the Soap Operas television shows of today and their reoccurring stock storylines, now imagine if these shows were given farcical and satirical elements of humor, …show more content…
Canfield Reisman “Molière’s art derived from two sources.” Reisman describes the first as the French farce, which involved some sort of trickery within the storyline, and physical action this delighted the simple audiences of the Middle Ages as well as more sophisticated audiences in Moliere’s own time. The second, was the commedia dell’arte. Commedia dell’arte originated in Italy and during Moliere time had only recently been introduced to France (Reisman). “These were plays with set situations but with improvised dialogue, presented by actors in masks, who represented character types.”(Commedia Dell'arte). Reisman goes on to talk about how Moliere developing his own kind of comedy, talking about his dependence on his plots on farce, which involved “elaborate schemes of deception, mistaken identity, disguise, and misdirection.” Reisman continues to write “the characters who are the targets of Moliere’s satire, for example, the miser, the greedy doctor, the jealous husband, and the coquette, are based on the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte.” To reinvent these characters Moliere used the influences of his the society that surrounded him while keeping with the attributes of the stock characters. Through this method of placing these stock characters in the society of his time he was able to give his characters individuality allowing for the creation of more dynamic comedic
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