Sentimental comedy

These plays aimed to produce tears rather than laughter and reflected contemporary philosophical conceptions of humans as inherently good but capable of being led astray by bad example.

Although the plays contained characters whose natures seemed overly virtuous and whose problems were too easily resolved, they were accepted by audiences as truthful representations of the human predicament.

Their private woes are exhibited with much emotional stress intended to arouse the spectator’s pity and suspense in advance of the approaching happy ending.

[6] The best known work of this genre is Sir Richard Steele's The Conscious Lovers (1722), in which the penniless heroine Indiana faces various tests until the discovery that she is an heiress leads to the necessary happy ending.

Many believed that the sexually explicit behavior encouraged by Charles II on the stage led to the demoralization of the English population outside the theater.

One of the leading environmental factors that made way for this new genre was Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, published in 1698.

[16] Sentimentalists met resistance with playwrights of true comedy, who also had a moral aim but strove to reach it by exhibiting characters from which the audience should take warning instead of emulate.

A play that encourages this type of behavior also interests the audience more in the rascal than the honest man showing the viewers that morality is shallow, worthless, and inverted.

Even Beaumarchais admits that some critics describe the genre as deadly dawdling prose with no comic relief, maxims, or characters with improbable plots that will inspire laziness in young writers who will not take the time to write verse.

Goldsmith advocates that since sentimental comedies show distresses that they should be labeled as tragedies, though a simple name change will not enhance their efficacy.

The essay is ended with a sarcastic comment about the ease with which any writer could create a sentimental comedy with just some, "insipid dialogue, without character or humour...make a pathetic scene or two, with a sprinkling of tender melancholy conversation...and there is no doubt that all the ladies will cry".