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Comedy of manners, witty, cerebral form of dramatic comedy that depicts and often satirizes the manners and affectations of a contemporary society. A comedy of manners is concerned with social usage and the question of whether or not characters meet certain social standards. Often the governing social standard is morally trivial but exacting. The plot of such a comedy, usually concerned with an illicit love affair or similarly scandalous matter, is subordinate to the play's brittle atmosphere, witty dialogue, and pungent commentary on human foibles, The comedy of manners, which was usually written by sophisticated authors for members of their own coterie or social class, has historically thrived in periods and societies that combined material prosperity and moral latitude. Such was the case in ancient Greece when Menander (c. 342-c. 292 BC) inaugurated New Comedy, the forerunner of comedy of manners. Menander's smooth style, elaborate plots, and stock characters were imitated by the Roman poets Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) and Terence (186/185-159 BC), whose comedies were widely known and copied during the Renaissance.

One of the greatest exponents of the comedy of manners was Molière, who satirized the hypocrisy and pretension of 17th-century French society in such plays as L'École des femmes (1662; The School for Wives) and Le Misanthrope (1666; The Misanthrope).

In England the comedy of manners had its great day during the Restoration period. Although influenced by Ben Jonson's comedy of humours, the Restoration comedy of manners was lighter, defter, and more vivacious in tone. Playwrights declared themselves against affected wit and acquired follies and satirized these qualities in caricature characters with label-like names such as Sir Fopling Flutter (in Sir George Etherege's Man of Mode, 1676) and Tattle (in William Congreve's The Old Batchelour, 1693). The masterpieces of the genre were the witty, cynical, and epigrammatic plays of William Wycherley (The Country-Wife, 1675) and William Congreve (The Way of the World, 1700). In the late 18th century Oliver Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer, 1773) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Rivals, 1775; The School for Scandal, 1777) revived the form.

The tradition of elaborate, artificial plotting and epigrammatic dialogue was carried on by the Anglo-Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in Lady Windermeres Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In the 20th century the comedy of manners reappeared in the witty, sophisticated drawing-room plays of the British dramatists Noël Coward and Somerset Maugham and the Americans Philip Barry and S.N. Behrman.

Comedy of Manners Characteristics

• It depends upon the dramatists' capacity to present the unemotional treatment of sex.

• It is rich with wit and satire and gives the image of the time.

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The heroine is more important and interesting than the hero in the Comedy of Manners

Both hero and heroine are well dressed, self-possessed and witty.

Whereas throughout its long career, English Tragedy has always accepted foreign influences, English Comedy has been less influenced by them. But Restoration Comedy of Manners took a good deal of continental spirit.

The manners which the Comedy of Manners shows were not the manners of all the classes of Restoration Society; they were rather the manners of the upper class only.

• This genre is characterized by realism (art), social analysis and satire. These comedies held a mirror to the finer society of their age. These comedies are thus true pictures of the noble society of the age.

One feature of the Restoration comedy which has been often criticised and almost as often defended is its immorality.

This genre held a mirror to the high society of the Restoration Age. The society was immortal and so was its image represented by the comedy.

• Most comedy writers liked the presentation of scenes and acts of sexual rudeness.

• The introduction of the actresses for the first time on the stage lowered the morality level. These actresses were mostly women of easy virtue.

• The writers of the Comedy of Manners gave much more importance to the wit and polish of their dialogues than to their plot-construction; which, in the views of Aristotle, "is the soul of a tragedy and a comedy too."

• The dialogue of the Comedy of Manners is witty, polished and crisp.

The Way of the World by William Congreve is an example of Comedy of Manners