When did comedy first started?

Answer 1

comedy started 400 years ago and it started with the Greeks

How it stared

The evolution of comedy is much simpler than that of its sister art, though as to its origin and earlier development there is little exact information. All that Aristotle can tell us is that it first took shape in Megaris and Sicyon, whose people were noted for their coarse humor and sense of the ludicrous, while Susarion, the earliest comic poet, was a native of a Megarian town. Add to this that it arose from the Phallic processions of the Greeks, as did tragedy from the dithyramb, and we have about all that is known as to the inception of the lighter branch of the drama.

Long before comedy central, before HBO, or even before the first comic did a spot on the Steve Allen Show, there were the comedy albums.

For the most part they started out as "party records" with Belle Barth, Moms Mabley, or Skillet & Leroy saying all those wonderfully naughty things that you weren't supposed to say in public. If you're of a certain age your parents probably had a stash of these records, held under lock and key that you were never supposed to listen to.

If you're reading this you probably listened to them every chance you got.

Eventually the albums gained respectability, as did the comics who recorded them. Moms Mabley and company were replaced by Newhart, and Lenny Bruce, then by Pryor and Carlin, and just about every comedian of note between the late 50's and the early 80's.

These are the albums that influenced the people who make America laugh today. Notice I didn't go for "Best Comedy Albums," or "Funniest Comedy Albums;" that would be subjective. Instead I asked the comedy performers, from the Smothers Brothers, down to open mikers what influenced them. To that I added information like record sales, chart positions, and Grammys won; and I came up with an informal list of what is influential.