We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
272 COMEDY ment she has felt. Maude is adopted as her heiress and taken from her drudgery to live with the aunt. Here it will be seen that the story is properly a comedy with a dra- matic touch. With slight changes it could be made into a direct com- edy, but these dramatic touches give a certain value to the plot. At each break the spectator laughs at the contrast between what is said and what they say they say. If he knows about Aunt Louisa, the situation is even more amusing. 6. All of these stories are based in lip reading. In the drama it pre- cipitates the catastrophe or event leading to the climax. In the melo- drama it is used merely to extricate the hero from his troubles. In the comedy drama it is used to gain laughs as well as to precipitate the catastrophe. It is dramatic in that it brings about the climax, but it also makes for comedy through the laughs it gains. 7. This is perhaps the best means of determining the classification of comedy, comedy drama and comedy. If the basis of the plot aims at a serious effect, it is drama. If it aims solely at humorous effect, it is comedy, but if it combines humorous with dramatic effect, then it is comedy drama or a mixture of comedy and drama. 8. The exact and definite classification of these three forms is seldom necessary. They group under the general head of drama when they are described, but it is seldom necessary to describe them at all. Send your play in without a label. The difference is explained here merely for the convenience of the author should a studio announce that it is in the market only for certain types of plays and not to aid the writer in building up an elaborate system of classification. (2.XLIII:13) (3.L:3 LIII :8) (4.LIV:1) (7.LVI:3). CHAPTER LVI COMEDY COMEDY bears the same relation to farce and slapstick that drama does to melodrama. It is the highest and most serious form of humorous writing and it is required that the probabilities shall ,be observed. Comedy may not tax belief. It must be so framed as to find ready acceptance as fact. It must be true to the general rules of life and not to the exceptional incident. 2. Comedy is the generic name for all classes of humorous writing —as well as the specific designation for the highest form. The true comedy is also known by various sub-classifications as "Society," "Po- lite," "Parlor," "Light," and other names which are more or less ex- planatory. All refer to the same general type, but a society comedy is supposed to concern fashionable personages; parlor or polite come- dies are those marked by absence of the slapstick element and is com- edy played with a light and graceful touch.