City comedy

City comedy, also known as citizen comedy, is a genre of comedy in the English early modern theatre.

Our Scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No country's mirth is better than our own.
No clime breeds better matter, for your whore,
Bawd, squire, imposter, many persons more

Emerging from Ben Jonson's late-Elizabethan comedies of humours (1598–1599), the conventions of city comedy developed rapidly in the first decade of the Jacobean era, as one playwright's innovations were soon adopted by others, such that by about 1605 the new genre was fully established. Its principal playwrights were Jonson himself, Thomas Middleton, and John Marston, though many others also contributed to its development, including Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, John Day, and John Webster. Once the companies of boy players—the Children of Paul's and the Children of the Chapel—had resumed public performances from 1600 onwards, most of their plays were city comedies. The closest that William Shakespeare's plays come to the genre is the slightly earlier The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597), which is his only play set entirely in England; it avoids the caustic satire of city comedy, however, in preference for a more romantic mode, while its setting, Windsor, is a town rather than a city.

In contrast to the adventurous chronicles of Elizabethan comedy, such as Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) or George Peele's The Old Wives' Tale (c. 1590), or the intricately plotted romantic comedies of Shakespeare and John Lyly, city comedy was more realistic (excluding magical or marvellous elements) and sharp and satirical in tone. It portrayed a broad range of characters from different ranks (often focused on citizens), employing "deeds and language such as men do use", as Jonson put it, and was usually set in London.

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