| comedy | The genre of play that makes you laugh, has plots that end happily, and reaffirms the values you hold to be important. (3-28)
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| comedy of manners | A comic play that derives its humor from the language and behavior of the characters; see also "high comedy." (3-28)
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| domestic comedy | A comic play with a domestic setting and middle-class characters. (3-28)
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| drama | A category of play that is serious but not tragic. (3-30)
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| farce | A play that makes you laugh a lot and leaves you feeling liberated by the wildly anarchic and improbable things that happen. (3-29)
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| genre | Categorization of dramas on the basis of their emotional impact on an audience; there are also literary characteristics of each genre; the six most common genres are tragedy, comedy, farce, melodrama, drama, and tragicomedy. (3-27)
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| high comedy | A comic play that derives its humor from the language and behavior of the characters; see also "comedy of manners." (3-28)
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| low comedy | A comedy about characters we laugh at more because of what they do than because of what they say. (3-28)
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| melodrama | A genre of play that provides entertainment that has the appearance of being serious but ends with the protagonist victorious; melodramas usually have highly emotional scenes alternating with comic scenes. (3-33)
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| slapstick | (1) A prop used in the commedia dell'arte made from two boards fastened together at one end and loose at the other so they could be slapped together to make a loud noise when an actor was hit by it; (2) term used to describe any broad and physical farce action. (3-30)
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| theatre of the absurd | A genre and style of European theatre that evolved in the mid-twentieth century and expresses the meaninglessness of the human condition in laugh-producing tragicomedies; Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco are the best-known Absurdist playwrights. (3-35)
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| tragedy | A serious play that makes you feel exhilarated because the hero's experience teaches you some profound truth about your life; a tragedy guides you toward feeling a sort of calm affirmation that your worst expectations about life are true, and you feel wiser for reaching this certainty. (3-32)
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| tragicomedy | A genre of play that dominated mid- to late twentieth century drama and that inspires agitation, frustration, and anxiety; tragicome-dies deal with serious topics but provoke laughter and express the lack of coherent values in the world. (3-35)
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