Comedy of manners is a genre of drama that satirizes social conventions, particularly the hypocrisies of high society and moral codes that prioritize public appearance over private behavior. Plots typically revolve around stock characters involved in scandals and explore upper-class pretensions and human foibles. The genre’s humor typically comprises witty, fast-paced dialogue that offers social critique by skewering the rules of etiquette and propriety. 

The genre has its origins in ancient Greek comedies. It then flourished in Enlightenment France with the works of Molière (Tartuffe, 1664 and The Misanthrope, 1666) and England with William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) and William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700). 18th- and 19th-century examples include Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (1777) and Oscar Wilde’s drawing room plays, notably The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Noël Coward carried the tradition of the comedy of manners into the 20th century. Private Lives is one of his best known plays in the genre, along with Hay Fever (1925), a comedy about a family entertaining guests at their English country house, and