According to all the comedy (e)scholars out there, like um, Wikipedia and MSN Encarta, just to name the two, comedy began with the Greeks.The Ancient Greeks. So, anything before Greece-- must not have been very funny, so for our purposes here, in the HistericaHistorica, we will consider that time abbreviated-- as b.C.--before Comedy.

Before Comedy, b.C., was a time of great darkness and ignorance. The people roamed the land looking for civilization, and when they became tired, they set up camp in Greece,( really lovely weather) and ipso-facto, Civilization found them. Now, not only would they have time to laugh at their own fart jokes, people would buy tickets to laugh at others fart jokes.And before you can say excuse me, Comedy is born.

Roger Dunkle of Some University writes:

Greek Comedy went through three phases: 1) Old Comedy, popular at Athens during the fifth century BC, characterized by the prominent role of the chorus, the use of obscenity in both language and gesture, an emphasis on political and social satire, and a vigorous concern with current events (especially the Peloponnesian War);2) Middle Comedy, a term used to refer to comedies written between 400 and 320 BC, characterized primarily by the decline in importance of the chorus and 3) New Comedy (320 to about mid-third century BC), a non-political form of comedy that ignores current events and has young love as a primary theme, with a chorus that does not participate in the plot.1 Middle and New Comedy were much less obscene.

Our knowledge of Greek comedy is limited. Of Old Comedy, we have only ten plays of Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps,Peace, Birds, Lysistrata, Frogs, Women of the Thesmophoria (= Ladies' Day), and Women of the Assembly. We have his Plutus as the only surviving example of Middle Comedy. Greek New Comedy is represented only by one virtually complete play of Menander (The Ill-Tempered Old Man) and and fairly large portions of six other plays. It should be noted that Menander wrote over a hundred plays in his lifetime.

Comedies, as well as tragedies, were presented at the City or Great Dionysia, the major festival at Athens in honor of the god Dionysus. At Rome, drama was also performed at various religious festivals.

http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/dunkle/comedy/introcom.htm

By Roman times, two Comedy playwrites Plautus and Terence were rolling out these hits--

  • Plautus, Menaechmi, ed. A.S. Gratwick (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993)
  • Terence, Phormio, ed. Elaine M. Coury (Bolchazy-Carducci, 1982)
  • Plautus, Casina, ed. W. Thomas MacCary and M.M. Willcock (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976) Terence, Adelphoe, ed. R.H. Martin (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976).


PLAUTUS was born in Umbria about the middle of the third century B.C. He is said to have been a slave and afterwards a stage-carpenter. But these may be stories invented to account for his knowledge of slave character and his connection, though a man of humble origin, with the theatre. He produced his first play in 224 B.C., and wrote without a rival till his death forty years later. Twenty of his plays remain.


TERENCE (Publius Terentius Afer) was born in Africa, and in his youth was brought to Rome as a slave. The name of his family is unknown, but when he was set free he took that of Terentius, from his master Terentius Lucanus. He began to write in the year 166 B.C., and continued with increasing success till his death.

One could reasonably argue that Plautus and Terence are the first recordedjoke thieves.Stealing mainly from the Greeks

The Middle Ages the MSN Encarta states:

'During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), plays featuring saints and biblical stories were popular throughout Europe. These so-called mystery and miracle plays were performed by local clergy or traveling actors, and they included comic interludes. These humorous episodes inserted into serious biblical narratives or dramatic histories of saints captivated the illiterate masses. Joseph's confusion over Mary's virgin conception of Jesus Christ, a Jewish spice seller haggling with Jesus's disciples, and Noah's frustrations with his implacably skeptical spouse were among the situations most often enacted.'

Now, can you imagine these scary little comedy stand ups?- Christian Monks or Jewish Rabbi's running around on the Cruaders Circuit? The Art of stand up comedy and touring begin during the Crusades it is rumored.

Shakespeare

Yup. the Bard. The greatest English writer ever, he was great at comedy too.

he wrote alot and more than a few!
While Will wrote for the nobility, the rest of the crowd loved the

Commedia Dell’arte

Again , according to MSN Encarta-"A form of professional theater, one of the earliest and most influential in Europe, originating in northern Italy in the 1550s and flourishing for 200 years. Without traditional dramatic texts, Commedia troupes of 6 to 12 actors improvised comedies on outdoor, informal stages or in conventional staging areas. They relied on stereotypical characters, masks, broad physical gestures, seemingly unrehearsed dialogue, musical interludes, and clowning to develop large audiences composed of all social classes and cultures. Unlike traditional theater, Commedia troupes featured skilled actresses rather than males playing the female characters. Almost immediately, the Commedia symbolized the theatricality and excitement of theater as opposed to the less popular literary, amateur court performances of the day.

From this collection of stock characters (and perhaps a dozen others), each Commedia troupe was able to dramatize hundreds of plot ideas. Commedia actors also developed individual comic routines, called Iazzi, which they could execute on demand, especially when it was felt that a sudden laugh was needed. For instance, a Commedia performer might pretend to trip and tumble into a pail of bath water during the exit sequence.

The Commedia's popularity both within Italy and outside the country was extraordinary. By the 1600s, the governments of Spain and France had attempted to censor and regulate the theater form. Eventually, the physical humor and character types of the Commedia were incorporated in conventional European theater. The traditions of the Commedia can easily be detected in the comedies of the French dramatists Molière and Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux. Competing playwrights Carlo Gozzi and Carlo Goldoni attempted to revive and reform the Commedia in Italy during the 18th century, but the vulgar, improvised genre remained in the world of popular entertainment, where the performers—not the playwrights or directors—retained creativity."

Comic writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries to a large degree followed the successful formats and comic inventions of their predecessors. More popular genres of stage comedy—such as minstrel shows, vaudeville, burlesques, and musicals—appeared during this period of rapid urbanization and liberated themselves from the artistic confines and audiences of high dramatic literature. Once again, the ancient arts of clowning and physical comedy were revived in up-to-date modes of performance .In the first quarter of the 20th century, silent motion-picture comedy developed naturally from these nonliterary sources of low comedy. And the separation of sophisticated comedy on stage from mass entertainment in radio, sound film, and television accelerated rapidly over the decades. By the 1930s Hollywood, the center of the film industry, had created an internationally recognized style that harked back to the time-tested techniques and comic types of ancient Greece and Rome.

Following World War II (1939-1945), the United States witnessed the growth of the situation comedy (or sitcom) on television, which featured idealized families dealing with everyday problems." T.V. became the new medium for comedy and culture, the culture coming into the homes of the audience, instead of the other way around.HistericaHistorica Part 2