Comedy of Manners

(in the 18th century also called "Old Comedy") written and created by Restoration playwrights such as, amongst others, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh and Wycherley. Condemned as immoral and dirty. The "Comedy of Manners revived under Sheridan, with much wit and less indelicacy" (Hartnall, Found), Richard Brinsley Sheridan was one of the most influential dramatists of the 18th century who wrote in the tradition of the Comedy of Manners.

Source:

The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Ed. Phillis Hartnall and Peter Found. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1996.