Read this passage. comedy is, as we have said, 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. what conclusion can not be drawn from the text? comedies tended to focus on ordinary characters of a less noble type. characters in a comedy are not necessarily morally bad, so much as physically funny in an exaggerated way. comedy is is an imitation of an action that is serious. as the characters of a comedy represent "a lower-type" of person, so the events typically portrayed in comedies tend towards the ordinary affairs of everyday people.