Meredith asks why great comic poets are so rare and answers that comedy needs a cultivated society of men and women, quick in perception, where ideas circulate and women stand on something like equal terms. He ranges across Molière, Menander, Congreve and the English stage, separating true comedy from satire, irony and humour.
The Victorian novelist’s best-known critical work, still quoted wherever writers try to define the comic spirit. Download the free EPUB.