Such a claim is however less clear than that made on behalf of tragedy, if only because no known culture appeals to lack some form of comic performance. As in the case of tragedy, therefore, we need to distinguish with some care between speculative generalizations about the comic spirit, and that more precise historical description needed to analyze the function of comedy in society. The name comedy comes from Comus, a Greek fertility god. Modern scholars and critics have thus taken comedy to be a universal celebration of life, a joyous outburst of laughter in the face of either an incomprehensible world or a repressive socio-political order. Carnival, festival, folly, and a general freedom of action then indicate either an indifference to and acceptance of the first, or a resistance to the second.
Comedy seems rather to oppose humans to one another, within essentially social boundaries.
Few of Shakespeare's immediate precursors call be more notorious than Robert Greene, or more enigmatic. His father was probably either a modest Norfolk saddler or a cordwainer-innkeeper boasting some prosperous connections in Yorkshire. He is probably the same Robert Greene who entered St. John's College as a sizar or poor working student in 1575, taking a middling B.A. in early 1580, and who moved to Clare Hall, where he took his M.A. three years later. One source, dates Greene's death 3 September 1592, and another relates his burial the following day. Both agree that Greene sickened from a surfeit of pickled herring, spent his last days in pain and remorse, and died hopelessly poor.