Product Description

In a grand tour of comic theatre over the centuries, Erich Segal traces the evolution of the classical form from its early origins in a misogynistic quip by the sixth-century BC Susarion, through countless weddings and happy endings, to the exasperated monosyllables of Samuel Beckett. The book illustrates comedy's glorious life cycle from its first breath to its death in the Theater of the Absurd. An exploration of various landmarks in the history of a genre that flourished almost unchanged for two millennia, "The Death of Comedy" revisits the obscenities and raucous twists of Aristophanes, the neighbourly pleasantries of Menander, the tomfoolery and farce of Plautus. Segal shows how the ribaldry of foiled adultery, a staple of Roman comedy, reappears in force on the stages of Restoration England. And he gives us a closer look at the schadenfreude - delight in someone else's misfortune - that marks Machiavelli's and Marlowe's works. At every turn in Segal's analysis - from Shakespeare to Moliere to Shaw - another facet of the comic art emerges, until finally, he argues, "the head conquers and the heart dies": Letting the intellect take the lead, Cocteau, Ionesco, and Beckett smother comedy as we know it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #729889 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 608 pages

Review
[Erich Segal's] new study of comedy in the Western theater displays the strengths he has built in both the arenas in which he competes. His scholarship is impressive: he manages to discuss in detail works by every major comic writer from Aristophanes and Plautus to Ionesco and Beckett. He is especially good on the Greek and Roman comic playwrights, and he spends at least half the book on those influential but, to the modern reader, lesser-known writers. Flexing his pop novelist's muscles, Segal conveys his ideas in clean, graceful, witty, and above all, highly accessible prose. You don't need a Ph.D. from Harvard to understand him, and you don't need to fully accept his thesis that traditional comedy 'died' or perhaps was killed by the modernist writers to enjoy and be enlightened by this lively book. -- Jack Helbig "Booklist" (08/01/2001)

Eric Handley, 2001
Its sweep of knowledge, learning unostentatiously presented [...] make The Death of Comedy broad and enlightening.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones, 2001
Erich Segal's introduction to ancient comedy in this book will both interest and delight many readers.