Quick questions on Comedy of manners and Australian comedy: HSC Drama elective

Comedy of manners is the form of comedy that satirises the codes and conventions of a particular social class. The form depends on witty dialogue, recognisable stock characters, and a closed social world whose codes the audience can see being honoured or broken. The pleasure is partly the verbal performance, partly the satirical content.

The Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 reopened the theatres (closed since 1642 under Puritan rule) and produced a burst of comic drama. The major figures:

Comedy of manners persists in the eighteenth century but softens. Sentimental comedy displaces the harder Restoration form by mid-century. The major figures:

The late-Victorian high point of comedy of manners. Wilde wrote four society comedies in five years.

The early twentieth century continuation. Coward wrote across a long career. His comedies of manners include:

Comedy of manners persists in various forms across the twentieth century. The Tom Stoppard plays (Arcadia, 1993, in part), the work of Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, 1973), the Yasmina Reza plays (Art, 1994; God of Carnage, 2006) extend the form. The boundary between comedy of manners and contemporary domestic comedy is porous.

Australian comedy is a related but distinct elective. It includes the vernacular comic tradition that runs from the late nineteenth century music hall through the New Wave to contemporary work.

Section II essays typically ask candidates to discuss the conventions of the form, analyse one or more specific plays, or evaluate the tradition's development. Strong essays move between historical context and detailed scene analysis.

The Man of Mode (1676), a satire of London Restoration manners with the fop Sir Fopling Flutter and the rake Dorimant. Etherege defined the comic register that the others followed.

The Country Wife (1675). The most sexually direct of the Restoration comedies. Horner, a rake, pretends to be impotent to seduce married women without their husbands' suspicion.

The Way of the World (1700). The most formally elegant of the Restoration comedies. Mirabell and Millamant's "proviso scene" (Act IV) is the canonical conversation about the terms of marriage.

The first professional female English playwright. The Rover (1677) and other plays bring a female perspective to Restoration comedy.

Dad and Dave stories adapted as stage and radio comedy.

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955) is not a pure comedy but has comic conventions.

David Williamson, Jack Hibberd, Alex Buzo and others built a vernacular comic theatre. Hibberd's Dimboola (1969) is a participatory wedding-reception comedy. Williamson's Don's Party (1971) is a comic political play.