Many comedies are instances of 'money on the stage' and not merely because their subject matter revolves around 'filthy lucre'. Numerous features characteristic of the genre serve to illustrate the social expectations geared to money. This being the case, it is possible to write a genre history of (baroque and Enlightenment) comedy in the form of 'social history on a cultural studies basis'. Proceeding from the homology between development and representation structures in comedy and the way money functions, the study essays a reconstruction of the evolution of the genre with special reference to its interrelations with the evolution of a market society.