ABSTRACT
Northrop Frye’s wonderful 1948 essay “The Argument of Comedy” has not been superceded as an account of the spirit of comedy in western theatre.1 Fifty years on it retains its hallmark clarity of thesis, comprehensiveness of vision, and suppleness of expression. During the years since Frye wrote it, we have witnessed changes of tectonic scale in literary theory, but they have yet to expose major fault lines in the structure of Frye’s analysis.2 For anyone interested in comedy, the essay forms a craton of thought, a stable central formation about which roil and fluctuate forces with origins less fathomable, meanings less decipherable, and purposes less discernible than Frye’s.
