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Slapstick! is the first book to draw together all the different strands of knockabout comedy and set them in a historical context. With the aid of a splendid array of illustrations, the highly entertaining text traces the roots and ramifications of visual comedy from its beginnings in primitive ritual, religious ceremonial, and court entertainment; through the melting-pot of the Italian Commedia dell' Arte ; to music-hall, vaudeville circus, film, radio, television and video. Tony Staveacre first chronicles the main events in two thousand years of slapstick: the rise and painful fall of the « top bananas » the shifting trends, the changing styles. He then examines in detail the living tradition in its different guises - the physical, the acrobatic, the shambolic, the eccentric, the salacious. He shows the slapstick baton pæsing from hand to hand: Harlequin, Pantaloon, John Rich, Grimaldi, Dan Leno, Fred Karno, Little Tich, Harry Tate, Charlie Chaplin, Grock, Jacques Tati, Stan Laurel, 0liver Hardy, the Crazy Gang, the Marx Brothers, Max Wall, Charlie Drake, the Goons (how did they get in here?), Peter Cook, John Cleese, Benny Hill, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor... [editor summary]