TRADITIONS, CONVENTIONS, INNOVATIONS, EXPLOSIONS, INVERSIONS: THE COMEDY OF MANNERS IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH DRAMA

MICHAEL WAYNE DONAGHE, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the use which contemporary British playwrights make of the various conventions and characteristics of the comedy of manners genre--particularly characterization, wit, and structure. Chapter I explores these conventions in three Restoration comedies, examining characterization in Etherege's The Man of Mode, verbal wit in Congreve's The Way of the World, and the structure of sexual conflicts in Wycherley's The Country Wife, through which characters achieve self-definition. Chapter II discusses these characteristics in the works of three contemporary dramatists--Alan Ayckbourn, Simon Gray, and Christopher Hampton. While Ayckbourn's characters in The Norman Conquests are middle-class rather than aristocratic, they nevertheless derive from the same types as Etherege's. Gray's dialogue in Butley and Otherwise Engaged employs many of the rhetorical devices found in Congreve's plays, but Gray's intellectual protagonists use wit to mask insecurity or to maintain detachment rather than to express self-assurance. Hampton is a satirist like Wycherley, and his characters in The Philanthropist and Treats strive to define themselves against the chaos of contemporary life. They fail, however, whereas Restoration characters usually succeed. The changes these dramatists make are accommodations for twentieth-century audiences and not genuine innovations. Chapters III, IV, and V analyze the innovations, explosions, and inversions in the manners comedies of Joe Orton, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter, respectively. Orton presents contemporary variations of the Restoration character types; and the wit and the sexual conflicts in Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot, and What the Butler Saw are also reminiscent of the earlier comedies of manners. Orton, however, uses the shock tactics of black humor to attack conventional attitudes toward sexuality, religion, familial relations, and the law. Stoppard primarily writes comedies of ideas rather than comedies of manners, although the character types and sexual conflicts in Jumpers, Travesties, and Night and Day derive from the Restoration comedies. The character's debates about philosophy, aesthetics, and journalism reveal Stoppard's concern for language and effective communication; he explodes the restrictions of conventional dialogue through his use of puns, epigrams, and literary allusions. Pinter writes about characters' attempts to define themselves through their relationships with others. The Lover, The Homecoming, and Old Times all treat characters who are successfully self-assertive. The Collection, with its theme of the impossibility of verification, No Man's Land, with its rejected proviso, and Betrayal, with its inverted structure and characters who maintain decorum, are, however, inverted comedies of manners. Pinter's characters often switch roles, moving from Truewit to Witwoud. Their wit is hostile, and they often manipulate others through silence rather than language. These six playwrights demonstrate that the characterization, verbal wit, and structure of traditional manners comedy have not only been adapted to satisfy the tastes of modern audiences but have also been integrated with new, innovative theatrical forms.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

British and Irish literature

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