The Birth of English Comedy

Table of Contents

Newsletter No. 06 -  The Birth of English Comedy: From Church Miracles to Shakespeare's Stage – A Complete Historical Guide

Newsletter No. 07 -   How 1066 Changed Everything: The Norman Conquest's Lasting Legacy on English Language, Society and Culture 

Newsletter No. 08 -   Medieval Drama Uncovered: How English Theatre Evolved from Church Rituals to Complex Morality Plays

Newsletter No. 09 -   Everyman's Enduring Journey: How a 15th-Century Morality Play Still Speaks to 21st-Century Audiences

Newsletter No. 10 -   Beyond King Arthur: Exploring the Rich Tapestry of Middle English Romances - From Charlemagne to Crusaders

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Edition 06 : The Genesis of Laughter – Tracing Comedy's Evolution in English Drama

The Birth of English Comedy: From Church Miracles to Shakespeare's Stage – A Complete Historical Guide

Keywords: origins of English comedy, medieval comic drama, first English plays, mystery plays comedy, morality plays humour, Tudor interludes, Renaissance comedy influences, Ralph Roister Doister analysis, pre-Shakespearean theatre

Introduction :

Welcome to this edition of The Insight Newsletter, where we embark on an intellectual journey through the fascinating evolution of English comedy. This survey begins not in the glittering theatres of Elizabethan London, but in the humble churchyards and market squares of medieval England. The development of comedy as a distinct dramatic genre represents one of the most significant cultural transformations in English literary history—a movement from sacred to secular, from Latin to vernacular, and from didactic instruction to pure entertainment. In this comprehensive guide, we will trace comedy's remarkable journey from its embryonic appearances in religious drama to its full flowering in the first acknowledged English comedies of the mid-sixteenth century. Understanding this evolution is crucial for appreciating how English drama developed its unique voice, blending native wit with classical sophistication to create the foundation upon which Shakespeare and his contemporaries would build their immortal works.

Content:

• The Sacred Origins: Liturgical Drama's Unintentional Humour

• English drama originated within the ecclesiastical tradition as liturgical tropes—brief dramatized interpolations in the Latin Mass. The earliest known example, Quem Quaeritis ("Whom do you seek?"), dating from the 10th century, dramatized the visit of the three Marys to Christ's tomb. While strictly religious in purpose, these performances established the dialogic format essential to drama.

• As these liturgical dramas expanded into cycle plays (also called mystery plays), performed by trade guilds on movable pageant wagons, they began incorporating vernacular elements and comic episodes. The four great cycles—Chester, York, Wakefield, and Coventry—presented Biblical history from Creation to Judgment Day, but increasingly included humorous scenes that reflected contemporary life.

• The comic potential of these religious dramas emerged through humanization of Biblical characters. In the Chester cycle's Deluge, Noah's wife appears not as a pious matriarch but as a stubborn, sharp-tongued woman who refuses to board the ark without her gossips and even slaps her husband. This characterization introduced domestic comedy into sacred narrative, making theological stories relatable through familiar human foibles.

• The Wakefield Master: Comedy Finds Its First English Voice

• The anonymous Wakefield Master, active in the early 15th century, represents the first truly distinctive comic voice in English drama. His contributions to the Wakefield (Towneley) cycle demonstrate remarkable literary skill and innovative approach to religious material.

• Secunda Pastorum (The Second Shepherds' Play) stands as his masterpiece and a landmark in comic development. While maintaining the Nativity framework, the play devotes most of its attention to a subplot involving the shepherds Mak and Gyll, who steal a sheep and attempt to disguise it as their newborn child. This embedded farce provides sharp social commentary on poverty and class while developing sustained comic suspense.

• The Wakefield Master's techniques—realistic dialogue in regional dialect, social satire, complex plotting, and character-driven humour—anticipated techniques that would flourish in later secular comedy. His work represents a crucial transition from drama as purely religious instruction to drama as entertainment with moral dimensions.

• Morality Plays: Allegory Meets Theatricality

• Emerging in the 15th century, morality plays shifted focus from Biblical history to allegorical representations of the human soul's journey. Plays like The Castle of Perseverance, Mankind, and Everyman used personified abstractions (Vices, Virtues, Death) to explore spiritual conflicts.

• These plays introduced comic vice characters who evolved from purely evil tempters to entertaining mischief-makers. In Mankind, characters like Mischief, New Guise, and Nowadays engage in bawdy humour, physical comedy, and even meta-theatrical interactions with the audience (including collecting money for viewing privileges).

• The morality tradition contributed significantly to comedy's development through: character typology (stock characters that would reappear in later comedy), audience engagement techniques, and the dramatization of moral conflicts through entertaining means rather than pure sermonizing.

• Interludes: The Secular Breakthrough

• The 16th century witnessed the rise of interludes—short, often farcical plays performed in noble households, universities, and public spaces. These works marked drama's decisive turn toward secular subjects and contemporary satire.

• John Heywood, the master of the interlude form, created works like The Play Called the Four PP (c. 1530), which features a lying contest between a Palmer, Pardoner, Potecary, and Pedlar. This play exemplifies the shift to social satire targeting recognizable contemporary types, particularly corrupt religious figures.

• Other notable interludes include John Skelton's Magnificence (political allegory), John Bale's King Johan (proto-historical drama supporting Reformation politics), and Johan Johan (domestic farce about a cuckolded husband). These works expanded comedy's range to include political commentary, domestic humour, and realistic social observation.

• Classical Influences and the First True Comedies

• The Renaissance revival of classical learning introduced English humanists to Roman comedy, particularly Plautus and Terence. University productions of Latin plays and translations of Italian Renaissance comedies provided models for plot construction, character types, and dramatic structure.

• Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (1553-54) is universally recognized as the first true English comedy. As headmaster at Westminster School, Udall combined his knowledge of Plautine comedy (particularly Miles Gloriosus) with native interlude traditions. The play features a unified five-act structure, recognizable character types (the braggart soldier, the clever servant, the chaste widow), and a plot centered on romantic intrigue and mistaken identities.

• The anonymous Gammer Gurton's Needle (c. 1566), first performed at Christ's College, Cambridge, represents another landmark. While less structurally sophisticated than Udall's work, it excels in rustic humour, vivid characterization, and use of vernacular dialogue. The play's central concern—the search for a lost needle that turns out to be stuck in a character's breeches—demonstrates how trivial domestic matters could sustain full-length comedy.

• These early comedies established patterns that would dominate English comedy for centuries: the clever servant outwitting his superiors, romantic complications resolved through discovery, social satire through character exaggeration, and the integration of native humour with classical forms.

• Italian Influences and Prose Comedy

• Italian Renaissance drama, particularly commedia erudita (learned comedy) and commedia dell'arte (professional improvised comedy), provided additional models. George Gascoigne's Supposes (1566), a translation of Ariosto's I Suppositi, introduced Italianate comedy of intrigue to English audiences.

• Significantly, Supposes was written in prose rather than verse—a groundbreaking departure that allowed for more naturalistic dialogue. The play's themes of disguise, mistaken identity, and romantic deception would become staples of Elizabethan comedy, most notably in Shakespeare's works.

• Legacy and Transition to Elizabethan Comedy

• The development traced here—from liturgical drama to secular comedy—created the essential foundation for the explosion of dramatic creativity in the Elizabethan period. Key achievements included: establishment of comedy as legitimate genre, development of native comic traditions, integration of classical models, and creation of enduring character types.

• When Shakespeare began writing in the 1590s, he inherited a comic tradition already rich with possibilities: the realistic humour of the mystery plays, the allegorical depth of the moralities, the social satire of the interludes, and the structural sophistication of classical comedy. His genius lay not in inventing English comedy but in synthesizing and transcending these diverse traditions.