Thalia, the muse of comedy, holding a comic mask – detail of “Muses Sarcophagus”, the nine Muses and their attributes; marble, early second century AD, Via Ostiense - Louvre

Charlie Chaplin, a well-known comedian

Poster with masks of comedy and tragedy

Comedy (from Greek: Kωμωδία), in modern times, is entertainment with generally funny content. It is able to make people laugh. This definition was used for theatre plays, and was first used in Ancient Greece. Aristotle defined this as “Comedy is, as an imitation of characters of a lower type- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain.” To him, the lampooners became writers of Comedy and the truly artistic ones became writers of Tragedy.