dramatic or literary entertainment with no underlying purpose except to provoke laughter by boasting, boisterous jokes, drunkenness, scolding, fighting, buffoonery, and other riotous activity. Used either alone or added as comic relief to more serious forms, low comedy has origins in the comic improvisations of actors in ancient Greek and Roman comedy. Low comedy can also be found in medieval religious drama, in the works of William Shakespeare, in farce and vaudeville, in the antics of motion-picture comedians, and in television.