The world of the comedy of manners is one agreeable trifling, of leisurely amusement, and it lives by the sheer brilliance of its style, grace and artificiality.
Business and other considerations of the everyday world are left behind. Such an artificial and unnatural genre cannot endure for long. By its very artificiality it soon grows tiresome. As Dryden realized, “pure comedy of wit is capable of realization only in a few brilliant scenes, repartee alone is not sufficient to sustain a whole comedy”.