ABSTRACT
The chief difficulty in any attempt to discover the character of comedy by inductive methods is the selection of specimens from which to generalise; for people cannot make the selection without first forming a notion of comedy to guide people in making it. Troilus is of high degree, but though he fell into misery he did not end wretchedly; and perhaps when Chaucer called it a ‘little’ tragedy he did so not merely in modesty or affection, but because he felt that even in the medieval sense the story was only a minor tragedy. The Egoist is an opposite example: Meredith called it a comedy, but surely it ought to have been a tragedy. The sentimental drama was partly a revolt against the subject matter of Restoration Comedy, and partly a result of the rapid changes in the social structure of England at the end of the seventeenth century. Restoration Comedy was aristocratic, artificial in style, and above all intellectual.
