Connoísseur, n.

An old wine-bibber was smashed in a railway collision, and some wine was poured on his lips to revive him. "Pauillac, 1873," he murmured and died.

~The Devil's Dictionary

A Comedy Schematic

I just watched the 2002 film version of The Importance of Being Earnest, which is one of the cleverest plays I've ever seen. It got me thinking about the particular group of period-piece comedies into which it falls. Other stories in this group include Gilbert and Sullivan's works, Moliere's The Miser, most Shakespeare comedies, a lot of Saki's short stories, some O Henry stories, and anything written by PG Wodehouse.

Within this group, there are a lot of similar themes and elements. I've figured out several lists detailing them.


Story elements:


Bets
Blackmail
Duels
Family pride
Love triangles
Matchmaking
Mis-mailed letter(s)
Mistaken identity
New-found inheritance

Political corruption

Social Hierarchy

Relationships:

Two relationships can be given per character, so that the second can be revealed in order to move the plot along during the 2nd or 3rd act.

Aunt/Uncle

  -overbearing, doting, cool

Boss

Butler

Cousin

Father/Mother

  -step-, foster

Fiancée

  -secret, arranged, normal

Friend

Husband/wife

Nanny

Old military buddy

Old school chum

An optional list is that of the possible supernatural elements. These change the nature of the story, making it even less realistic than it already was, so they should be handled with care. Also, it's a short list, since there aren't many supernatural things that constantly come up in witty comedies.

Supernatural Elements:

Deities

  -benevolent, malevolent, pranking

Ghosts

  -advice-dispensing, task-requiring

Love potions

My last list is of the elements that are more or less completely essential to this type of story. I saved it for last because these ones are pretty intuitive, and shouldn't need as much attention as the others when one constructs the story. They're just helpful to have in mind.

Essentials:

Intellectual exchanges of wit 

Lies

A happy ending

Using these lists, one can compose a plot. Mix and match three or four story elements, pick out some good relationships for the characters, and then make a plot that works off of each one. If one can make most of the plot elements intertwine with each other, it will work well. 

A good technique is to choose one of the story elements to center the entire plot on, and weave the others around it, since this makes the story cohesive. Give the characters unrealistic priories, like family pride or a bet over one's life, since this opens up a lot of story possibilities that wouldn't actually exist in real life, and makes the story funnier.

You'll have to come up with the wit by yourself. Originality is one thing I can't help you with.

Wit

I'm interested in wit. In my opinion, it's the clearest and probably best way to show one's level of intelligence. However, after looking over the work of greatest wits of history, I've noticed some patterns. These can all be summed up into one point: wit is word-based.

The usual witticism will convey two elements. First, either a deep philosophical statement, or an insult of some sort. Second, a completely unrelated play on words. 

For example, the great wit Oscar Wilde has been attributed the quote, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." The philosophical point is that Wilde would rather be infamous then unknown, and the wordplay is that he used a seeming contradiction of words to say so. 

As another example, Churchill has been said to have been invited to a play with "Bring a friend...if you have one" and replying with something alone the lines of "I have a previous engagement, but I'll gladly attend your second night...if you have one." Or maybe it was someone else who said it. I don't care, since it's beside the point. The joke follows the same pattern as most other wit: It has a insightful or insulting comment (and this time it's an insult) made funny by wordplay (parallel construction this time). 

I've always thought that wordplay was a bit of a shallow way to be witty, since it's usually pretty easy. But after looking through the different wits, from Whistler to Twain to Marx (just kidding, I meant Marx), wordplay was just about the only thing they could use. 

As a corollary, this explains why puns are disliked so much. Since they try to play on words, but tend to be unimpressive, they are the one form of joke that has the highest aspirations but goes the least towards reaching them. I still like them anyway. Probably because they're the underdog.