A Cultural History of Comedy in the Modern Age.

Slapstick has rarely been analyzed in any detail and it is only in very recent years that popular forms of performance have been given any serious consideration in a way that focuses on what the performers actually do or did. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that comedy conveyed primarily through the body is indeed worthy of and repays analysis. In order to investigate the ways in which the body can be used to convey comedy, it will be necessary to establish a framework for identifying which physical comedy is created primarily by the writer and which is created primarily by the performer. This is not to suggest that there is no connection between the two, but one helpful distinction can be to think about comedy in terms of that which is written into the performance and that which is generated by the performer.