ABSTRACT
Comedy was not recognized formally as a dramatic genre in the sense in which Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson and their successors defined it: it was not recognized theatrically as something different in kind from tragedy or pastoral in the sense in which Italian scenic designers from Serlio onwards distinguished it visually; yet it was recognized as early as the fourteenth century - at least by Dante and Chaucer - as possessing distinctive qualities in terms of literary narrative. The balance between the malign and the comic in theatrical characterization was at best a precarious one and likely, in liturgical environment, to open dramatic representation to question - at least as an integral part of a particular ‘order of service’. The balance between the malign and the comic in theatrical characterization was at best a precarious one and likely, in a liturgical environment, to open dramatic representation to question - at least as integral part of particular ‘order of service’.
