The Morphology of Literary Genius

I was recently reminded of the biological truism of embryonic parallelism "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" when I encountered this statement in an annotated bibliography:

"The comedies of Plautus, written near the beginning of Latin literature, are full of lively humanity.  His comic animation and chaotic plots stand in sharp contrast to Terence's quieter, more polished and sensitive comedies of manners."

This distinction seems to be visible likewise in the English comedic tradition, with the sequence from Shakespeare through Ben Jonson to Restoration comedy mirroring Plautus, while Terence is emulated by Addison ("The Rivals", "The School for Scandal") through Goldsmith ("She Stoops to Conquer") to Wilde ("Lady Windemere's Fan", "An Ideal Husband").

I am less able to say whether the sequence remains true to type in French comedy.  Moliere certainly provides adequate exempla of the first mode, but I am insufficiently well-studied to know first-hand whether Voltaire and his contemporaries produced comedy of the other, as they are largely forgotten, at least in translation for readers of English.

Still, it would be interesting to investigate whether this process from farce to sophistication is universal:  does Aristophanes to Menander prove the rule or stand as a counter-example?  Does Chekhov have a farcical predecessor in Russian theatre?  And do American comedies of mid-century conform to either mode?

This all seems to echo the historical morphologies of scholars like Pitirim Sorokin et. al., who attempted to see patterns, even inevitable sequences, in aesthetic or historical development (most famously by Toynbee in his masterful A Study of History, quod vide).