The "romantic comedy" (Shakespeare's variety) of the period directly preceding Molière's emphasized a kind of plot development which was to be rejected by Molière. Comedies written during the Renaissance period were often similar in outline: a complex situation involving a number of characters, misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and the like is created, then an element of suspense is added, and finally all of the complications are unraveled to the satisfaction of most of the characters. "Romantic comedy" had nothing directly to do with contemporary society; indeed, the settings of most of the plays are in faraway kingdoms or "exotic" foreign countries. Any immediate social reference would usually be embedded in the fanciful story of the play.
In the neoclassical period, however, contemporary society became one of the central concerns of the comic dramatist. An age of balance, precision, and regularity — as the neoclassical age is generally considered — insists upon certain norms of behavior in society. The "irregular," eccentric individual had to be laughed back to normalcy. While the same principle may have applied to Shakespearean comedy in general, the identification of actual social types in the plays was not quite so obvious as it became with Molière. The very subject matter for neoclassical comedy became problems implicit in society. Although this type of drama, "social comedy," necessitates a certain faith in the value of society, the dramatist does not necessarily condone all of the aspects of his particular contemporary society. Laughter is evoked when a character departs in his behavior from the sanctioned norms of society, but it is also evoked often enough from the very "norm" itself.
