Comedy
One of the best examples of the power of the rule of three is in comedy, where it is also called a comic triple. Two is the smallest number of points needed to establish a pattern, and comedians exploit the way people's minds perceive expected patterns to throw the audience off track (and make them laugh) with the third element.
The generic three-panel daily comic strip, and Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman, as well as "a blonde, a brunette and a redhead" jokes are some more examples of the rule of three in comedy.
Read more about this topic: Rule Of Three (writing)
Famous quotes containing the word comedy:
“It is comedy which typifies, where it is tragedy which individualizes; where tragedy observes the nice distinctions between man and man, comedy stresses those broad resemblances which make it difficult to tell people apart.”
—Harry Levin (b. 1912)
“Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)