Ways and means of creating a comic effect in English drama discourse

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of the authors remark and its functional ability to create a comic effect. At the first stage, an attempt was made to determine the role of the authors commentary in the text of the play. Within the framework of this question, we have highlighted the key characteristics of dramatic discourse, namely, fiction and stylization. Next, we focused on the phenomenon of paratext, presenting the positions of both domestic and foreign researchers regarding the role of paratext in a dramatic work, namely the need to take into account the features of paratext when performing discourse analysis. In addition, in the article we made an attempt to present a brief history of the origin of the term paratext. Thus, the processes of interaction within the pair text-paratext substantiated the need to study the dramatic text precisely through the prism of this correlation. As sources of factual material, we selected plays (The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, The Play that Goes Wrong), the authors of which were a galaxy of British playwrights working in tandem: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields. In the course of the study, a selection of text fragments was formed, which made it possible to identify a number of authorial techniques for creating a comic effect, the mechanisms of which are repeatedly duplicated from play to play, which makes it possible to suggest the presence of a characteristic comic style inherent in this trio of playwrights. As a basic technique for creating a comic effect, the authors use the interaction of replicas of the characters of the play and remarks that contradict each other, thereby realizing the principle of inconsistency, which in turn becomes one of the basic principles of comedy. Thus, the final part of the study is devoted to the implementation of the principles of absurdity, inconsistency and deceived expectations through the interaction of the authors remark and the dialogue part of the play.