The Language of Comedy and the Drama of the Schools

To define comedy as the opposite of tragedy has always been a temptation to critics, for definitions of tragedy are more easily made, especially since Aristotle began by making them. In the Middle Ages, when tragedy disclosed the fall of great men from prosperity to adversity, comedy showed the happy issue out of initial difficulties. The medieval grammarians - Donatus in particular, whose essay was known even to schoolboys - were concerned above all to evolve a clear and precise antithesis between the two forms.