City comedy

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

City comedy, also called Citizen Comedy, is a common genre of Elizabethan drama. It is a vague term that different scholars use to mean slightly different things. Some usual meanings of the term include:

• Any Elizabethan comedy set in London and depicting ordinary London life. These include works which celebrate the lives of ordinary citizens, such as Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday.
• London comedies that are specifically satirical in nature, depicting London as a hotbed of sin; in particular, some of the comedies of Ben Jonson (The Devil is an Ass, Every Man in his Humour), Thomas Middleton (Michaelmas Term, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside) and John Marston (Jack Drum's Entertainment).

The first city comedy is generally agreed to be Englishmen for My Money, written by William Haughton and first performed in 1598 by the Admiral's Men. The genre soon became very popular; the intricately-plotted romantic comedies of Shakespeare and John Lyly that had been in vogue on the public and private stages until this point were largely supeseded by plays which were set in a recognisable contemporary London, and which dealt with, in Ben Jonson's words, "deeds and language such as men do use" (Prologue to Every Man in his Humour).

Other notable examples of the genre are Westward Ho, Eastward Ho, Northward Ho, and Greene's Tu Quoque.

The city comedy can be considered a forerunner of the comedy of manners.

It is worth noting that although Shakespeare continued to write plays during this period, the London city comedy was a genre he conspicuously avoided.