Aspects of comedy: the way that comedy draws attention to itself

The idea

Comedy is self-aware: it flaunts its own artifice so the audience watches knowing it is a construct. In Twelfth Night, Feste's final epilogue-song frames the action as performance; in The Taming of the Shrew, the Induction presents a play-within-a-play, so the audience is invited to judge the fiction. The skill is to identify the device, explain how it signals constructedness, and analyse the effect on response — amusement, critical distance or awareness of theatrical convention.

What earns the marks

• Identifies a specific self-referential device, such as direct address, an aside, a play-within-a-play, a song or a named meta-theatrical reference, and locates it precisely in the text.
• Explains how the device exposes the play as a constructed performance rather than a transparent slice of life, using accurate dramatic terminology.
• Analyses the effect of that self-awareness on the audience, for example creating complicity, critical distance or shared amusement at the convention itself.
• Connects the moment to the wider comic design, showing how self-consciousness shapes plotting, characterisation or the play's resolution.
• Uses concise textual evidence, such as a short quotation or close reference to staging, and integrates it into the argument rather than listing devices.

Common mistakes and how to put them right

• Treating any humorous line as evidence of self-aware comedy.

  Put it right: Select moments where the text explicitly signals its own theatricality, such as an aside or a play-within-a-play.

• Describing a device without explaining its effect.

  Put it right: State what the self-awareness makes the audience think or feel and why that matters to the comedy.

• Assuming self-awareness always produces the same response.

  Put it right: Differentiate between, for example, affectionate complicity and satirical detachment, supporting each with textual detail.

Exam tips

• Anchor each point in a named device and a precise moment, then move quickly to the effect on the audience.
• Use dramatic vocabulary accurately — aside, soliloquy, metatheatre, framing device — to show control of the genre.