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diff --git a/1219-h/1219-h.htm b/1219-h/1219-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5789833 --- /dev/null +++ b/1219-h/1219-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1962 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>An Essay on Comedy</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">An Essay on Comedy, by George Meredith</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Essay on Comedy, by George Meredith + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: An Essay on Comedy + And the Uses of the Comic Spirit + + +Author: George Meredith + +Release Date: May 13, 2005 [eBook #1219] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY ON COMEDY*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1897 Archibald Constable and Company edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>AN ESSAY ON COMEDY AND THE USES OF THE COMIC SPIRIT<br /> +by George Meredith</h1> +<p><i>This Essay was first published in ‘The New Quarterly Magazine’ +for April 1877</i>.</p> +<h2>ON THE IDEA OF COMEDY AND OF THE USES OF THE COMIC SPIRIT <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a></h2> +<p>Good Comedies are such rare productions, that notwithstanding the +wealth of our literature in the Comic element, it would not occupy us +long to run over the English list. If they are brought to the +test I shall propose, very reputable Comedies will be found unworthy +of their station, like the ladies of Arthur’s Court when they +were reduced to the ordeal of the mantle.</p> +<p>There are plain reasons why the Comic poet is not a frequent apparition; +and why the great Comic poet remains without a fellow. A society +of cultivated men and women is required, wherein ideas are current and +the perceptions quick, that he may be supplied with matter and an audience. +The semi-barbarism of merely giddy communities, and feverish emotional +periods, repel him; and also a state of marked social inequality of +the sexes; nor can he whose business is to address the mind be understood +where there is not a moderate degree of intellectual activity.</p> +<p>Moreover, to touch and kindle the mind through laughter, demands +more than sprightliness, a most subtle delicacy. That must be +a natal gift in the Comic poet. The substance he deals with will +show him a startling exhibition of the dyer’s hand, if he is without +it. People are ready to surrender themselves to witty thumps on +the back, breast, and sides; all except the head: and it is there that +he aims. He must be subtle to penetrate. A corresponding +acuteness must exist to welcome him. The necessity for the two +conditions will explain how it is that we count him during centuries +in the singular number.</p> +<p>‘C’est une étrange entreprise que celle de faire +rire les honnêtes gens,’ Molière says; and the difficulty +of the undertaking cannot be over-estimated.</p> +<p>Then again, he is beset with foes to right and left, of a character +unknown to the tragic and the lyric poet, or even to philosophers.</p> +<p>We have in this world men whom Rabelais would call agelasts; that +is to say, non-laughers; men who are in that respect as dead bodies, +which if you prick them do not bleed. The old grey boulder-stone +that has finished its peregrination from the rock to the valley, is +as easily to be set rolling up again as these men laughing. No +collision of circumstances in our mortal career strikes a light for +them. It is but one step from being agelastic to misogelastic, +and the μισοyελως, +the laughter-hating, soon learns to dignify his dislike as an objection +in morality.</p> +<p>We have another class of men, who are pleased to consider themselves +antagonists of the foregoing, and whom we may term hypergelasts; the +excessive laughers, ever-laughing, who are as clappers of a bell, that +may be rung by a breeze, a grimace; who are so loosely put together +that a wink will shake them.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘. . . C’est n’estimer rien qu’estioner +tout le monde,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and to laugh at everything is to have no appreciation of the Comic +of Comedy.</p> +<p>Neither of these distinct divisions of non-laughers and over-laughers +would be entertained by reading The Rape of the Lock, or seeing a performance +of Le Tartuffe. In relation to the stage, they have taken in our +land the form and title of Puritan and Bacchanalian. For though +the stage is no longer a public offender, and Shakespeare has been revived +on it, to give it nobility, we have not yet entirely raised it above +the contention of these two parties. Our speaking on the theme +of Comedy will appear almost a libertine proceeding to one, while the +other will think that the speaking of it seriously brings us into violent +contrast with the subject.</p> +<p>Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the +Muses. She was in her origin, short of slaughter, the loudest +expression of the little civilization of men. The light of Athene +over the head of Achilles illuminates the birth of Greek Tragedy. +But Comedy rolled in shouting under the divine protection of the Son +of the Wine-jar, as Dionysus is made to proclaim himself by Aristophanes. +Our second Charles was the patron, of like benignity, of our Comedy +of Manners, which began similarly as a combative performance, under +a licence to deride and outrage the Puritan, and was here and there +Bacchanalian beyond the Aristophanic example: worse, inasmuch as a cynical +licentiousness is more abominable than frank filth. An eminent +Frenchman judges from the quality of some of the stuff dredged up for +the laughter of men and women who sat through an Athenian Comic play, +that they could have had small delicacy in other affairs when they had +so little in their choice of entertainment. Perhaps he does not +make sufficient allowance for the regulated licence of plain speaking +proper to the festival of the god, and claimed by the Comic poet as +his inalienable right, or for the fact that it was a festival in a season +of licence, in a city accustomed to give ear to the boldest utterance +of both sides of a case. However that may be, there can be no +question that the men and women who sat through the acting of Wycherley’s +Country Wife were past blushing. Our tenacity of national impressions +has caused the word theatre since then to prod the Puritan nervous system +like a satanic instrument; just as one has known Anti-Papists, for whom +Smithfield was redolent of a sinister smoke, as though they had a later +recollection of the place than the lowing herds. Hereditary Puritanism, +regarding the stage, is met, to this day, in many families quite undistinguished +by arrogant piety. It has subsided altogether as a power in the +profession of morality; but it is an error to suppose it extinct, and +unjust also to forget that it had once good reason to hate, shun, and +rebuke our public shows.</p> +<p>We shall find ourselves about where the Comic spirit would place +us, if we stand at middle distance between the inveterate opponents +and the drum-and-fife supporters of Comedy: ‘Comme un point fixe +fait remarquer l’emportement des autres,’ as Pascal says. +And were there more in this position, Comic genius would flourish.</p> +<p>Our English idea of a Comedy of Manners might be imaged in the person +of a blowsy country girl—say Hoyden, the daughter of Sir Tunbelly +Clumsy, who, when at home, ‘never disobeyed her father except +in the eating of green gooseberries’—transforming to a varnished +City madam; with a loud laugh and a mincing step; the crazy ancestress +of an accountably fallen descendant. She bustles prodigiously +and is punctually smart in her speech, always in a fluster to escape +from Dulness, as they say the dogs on the Nile-banks drink at the river +running to avoid the crocodile. If the monster catches her, as +at times he does, she whips him to a froth, so that those who know Dulness +only as a thing of ponderousness, shall fail to recognise him in that +light and airy shape.</p> +<p>When she has frolicked through her five Acts to surprise you with +the information that Mr. Aimwell is converted by a sudden death in the +world outside the scenes into Lord Aimwell, and can marry the lady in +the light of day, it is to the credit of her vivacious nature that she +does not anticipate your calling her Farce. Five is dignity with +a trailing robe; whereas one, two, or three Acts would be short skirts, +and degrading. Advice has been given to householders, that they +should follow up the shot at a burglar in the dark by hurling the pistol +after it, so that if the bullet misses, the weapon may strike and assure +the rascal he has it. The point of her wit is in this fashion +supplemented by the rattle of her tongue, and effectively, according +to the testimony of her admirers. Her wit is at once, like steam +in an engine, the motive force and the warning whistle of her headlong +course; and it vanishes like the track of steam when she has reached +her terminus, never troubling the brains afterwards; a merit that it +shares with good wine, to the joy of the Bacchanalians. As to +this wit, it is warlike. In the neatest hands it is like the sword +of the cavalier in the Mall, quick to flash out upon slight provocation, +and for a similar office—to wound. Commonly its attitude +is entirely pugilistic; two blunt fists rallying and countering. +When harmless, as when the word ‘fool’ occurs, or allusions +to the state of husband, it has the sound of the smack of harlequin’s +wand upon clown, and is to the same extent exhilarating. Believe +that idle empty laughter is the most desirable of recreations, and significant +Comedy will seem pale and shallow in comparison. Our popular idea +would be hit by the sculptured group of Laughter holding both his sides, +while Comedy pummels, by way of tickling him. As to a meaning, +she holds that it does not conduce to making merry: you might as well +carry cannon on a racing-yacht. Morality is a duenna to be circumvented. +This was the view of English Comedy of a sagacious essayist, who said +that the end of a Comedy would often be the commencement of a Tragedy, +were the curtain to rise again on the performers. In those old +days female modesty was protected by a fan, behind which, and it was +of a convenient semicircular breadth, the ladies present in the theatre +retired at a signal of decorum, to peep, covertly askant, or with the +option of so peeping, through a prettily fringed eyelet-hole in the +eclipsing arch.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Ego limis specto sic per flabellum clanculum.’—</p> +<p>TERENCE.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That fan is the flag and symbol of the society giving us our so-called +Comedy of Manners, or Comedy of the manners of South-sea Islanders under +city veneer; and as to Comic idea, vacuous as the mask without the face +behind it.</p> +<p>Elia, whose humour delighted in floating a galleon paradox and wafting +it as far as it would go, bewails the extinction of our artificial Comedy, +like a poet sighing over the vanished splendour of Cleopatra’s +Nile-barge; and the sedateness of his plea for a cause condemned even +in his time to the penitentiary, is a novel effect of the ludicrous. +When the realism of those ‘fictitious half-believed personages,’ +as he calls them, had ceased to strike, they were objectionable company, +uncaressable as puppets. Their artifices are staringly naked, +and have now the effect of a painted face viewed, after warm hours of +dancing, in the morning light. How could the Lurewells and the +Plyants ever have been praised for ingenuity in wickedness? Critics, +apparently sober, and of high reputation, held up their shallow knaveries +for the world to admire. These Lurewells, Plyants, Pinchwifes, +Fondlewifes, Miss Prue, Peggy, Hoyden, all of them save charming Milamant, +are dead as last year’s clothes in a fashionable fine lady’s +wardrobe, and it must be an exceptionably abandoned Abigail of our period +that would look on them with the wish to appear in their likeness. +Whether the puppet show of Punch and Judy inspires our street-urchins +to have instant recourse to their fists in a dispute, after the fashion +of every one of the actors in that public entertainment who gets possession +of the cudgel, is open to question: it has been hinted; and angry moralists +have traced the national taste for tales of crime to the smell of blood +in our nursery-songs. It will at any rate hardly be questioned +that it is unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, +if they are no better than they should be: and they will not, when they +have improved in manners, care much to see themselves as they once were. +That comes of realism in the Comic art; and it is not public caprice, +but the consequence of a bettering state. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a> +The same of an immoral may be said of realistic exhibitions of a vulgar +society.</p> +<p>The French make a critical distinction in <i>ce qui remue</i> from +<i>ce qui émeut</i>—that which agitates from that which +touches with emotion. In the realistic comedy it is an incessant +<i>remuage</i>—no calm, merely bustling figures, and no thought. +Excepting Congreve’s Way of the World, which failed on the stage, +there was nothing to keep our comedy alive on its merits; neither, with +all its realism, true portraiture, nor much quotable fun, nor idea; +neither salt nor soul.</p> +<p>The French have a school of stately comedy to which they can fly +for renovation whenever they have fallen away from it; and their having +such a school is mainly the reason why, as John Stuart Mill pointed +out, they know men and women more accurately than we do. Molière +followed the Horatian precept, to observe the manners of his age and +give his characters the colour befitting them at the time. He +did not paint in raw realism. He seized his characters firmly +for the central purpose of the play, stamped them in the idea, and by +slightly raising and softening the object of study (as in the case of +the ex-Huguenot, Duke de Montausier, <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a> +for the study of the Misanthrope, and, according to St. Simon, the Abbe +Roquette for Tartuffe), generalized upon it so as to make it permanently +human. Concede that it is natural for human creatures to live +in society, and Alceste is an imperishable mark of one, though he is +drawn in light outline, without any forcible human colouring. +Our English school has not clearly imagined society; and of the mind +hovering above congregated men and women, it has imagined nothing. +The critics who praise it for its downrightness, and for bringing the +situations home to us, as they admiringly say, cannot but disapprove +of Molière’s comedy, which appeals to the individual mind +to perceive and participate in the social. We have splendid tragedies, +we have the most beautiful of poetic plays, and we have literary comedies +passingly pleasant to read, and occasionally to see acted. By +literary comedies, I mean comedies of classic inspiration, drawn chiefly +from Menander and the Greek New Comedy through Terence; or else comedies +of the poet’s personal conception, that have had no model in life, +and are humorous exaggerations, happy or otherwise. These are +the comedies of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Fletcher. Massinger’s +Justice Greedy we can all of us refer to a type, ‘with fat capon +lined’ that has been and will be; and he would be comic, as Panurge +is comic, but only a Rabelais could set him moving with real animation. +Probably Justice Greedy would be comic to the audience of a country +booth and to some of our friends. If we have lost our youthful +relish for the presentation of characters put together to fit a type, +we find it hard to put together the mechanism of a civil smile at his +enumeration of his dishes. Something of the same is to be said +of Bobadil, swearing ‘by the foot of Pharaoh’; with a reservation, +for he is made to move faster, and to act. The comic of Jonson +is a scholar’s excogitation of the comic; that of Massinger a +moralist’s.</p> +<p>Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with +the comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is +to be found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, +but they are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and +by great poetic imagination. They are, as it were—I put +it to suit my present comparison—creatures of the woods and wilds, +not in walled towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition +of the narrower world of society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, +the varied troop of Clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen—marvellous +Welshmen!—Benedict and Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects +of a special study in the poetically comic.</p> +<p>His Comedy of incredible imbroglio belongs to the literary section. +One may conceive that there was a natural resemblance between him and +Menander, both in the scheme and style of his lighter plays. Had +Shakespeare lived in a later and less emotional, less heroical period +of our history, he might have turned to the painting of manners as well +as humanity. Euripides would probably, in the time of Menander, +when Athens was enslaved but prosperous, have lent his hand to the composition +of romantic comedy. He certainly inspired that fine genius.</p> +<p>Politically it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles +thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze. It was a boon to the +comic poet. He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule +passions, the huge pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes +in full activity; vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, +posturers, extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians, +sonneteering marquises, high-flying mistresses, plain-minded maids, +inter-threading as in a loom, noisy as at a fair. A simply bourgeois +circle will not furnish it, for the middle class must have the brilliant, +flippant, independent upper for a spur and a pattern; otherwise it is +likely to be inwardly dull as well as outwardly correct. Yet, +though the King was benevolent toward Molière, it is not to the +French Court that we are indebted for his unrivalled studies of mankind +in society. For the amusement of the Court the ballets and farces +were written, which are dearer to the rabble upper, as to the rabble +lower, class than intellectual comedy. The French bourgeoisie +of Paris were sufficiently quick-witted and enlightened by education +to welcome great works like Le Tartuffe, Les Femmes Savantes, and Le +Misanthrope, works that were perilous ventures on the popular intelligence, +big vessels to launch on streams running to shallows. The Tartuffe +hove into view as an enemy’s vessel; it offended, not <i>Dieu +mais les dévots</i>, as the Prince de Condé explained +the cabal raised against it to the King.</p> +<p>The Femmes Savantes is a capital instance of the uses of comedy in +teaching the world to understand what ails it. The farce of the +Précieuses ridiculed and put a stop to the monstrous romantic +jargon made popular by certain famous novels. The comedy of the +Femmes Savantes exposed the later and less apparent but more finely +comic absurdity of an excessive purism in grammar and diction, and the +tendency to be idiotic in precision. The French had felt the burden +of this new nonsense; but they had to see the comedy several times before +they were consoled in their suffering by seeing the cause of it exposed.</p> +<p>The Misanthrope was yet more frigidly received. Molière +thought it dead. ‘I cannot improve on it, and assuredly +never shall,’ he said. It is one of the French titles to +honour that this quintessential comedy of the opposition of Alceste +and Célimène was ultimately understood and applauded. +In all countries the middle class presents the public which, fighting +the world, and with a good footing in the fight, knows the world best. +It may be the most selfish, but that is a question leading us into sophistries. +Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life, and are +attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and +balanced observers. Molière is their poet.</p> +<p>Of this class in England, a large body, neither Puritan nor Bacchanalian, +have a sentimental objection to face the study of the actual world. +They take up disdain of it, when its truths appear humiliating: when +the facts are not immediately forced on them, they take up the pride +of incredulity. They live in a hazy atmosphere that they suppose +an ideal one. Humorous writing they will endure, perhaps approve, +if it mingles with pathos to shake and elevate the feelings. They +approve of Satire, because, like the beak of the vulture, it smells +of carrion, which they are not. But of Comedy they have a shivering +dread, for Comedy enfolds them with the wretched host of the world, +huddles them with us all in an ignoble assimilation, and cannot be used +by any exalted variety as a scourge and a broom. Nay, to be an +exalted variety is to come under the calm curious eye of the Comic spirit, +and be probed for what you are. Men are seen among them, and very +many cultivated women. You may distinguish them by a favourite +phrase: ‘Surely we are not so bad!’ and the remark: ‘If +that is human nature, save us from it!’ as if it could be done: +but in the peculiar Paradise of the wilful people who will not see, +the exclamation assumes the saving grace.</p> +<p>Yet should you ask them whether they dislike sound sense, they vow +they do not. And question cultivated women whether it pleases +them to be shown moving on an intellectual level with men, they will +answer that it does; numbers of them claim the situation. Now, +Comedy is the fountain of sound sense; not the less perfectly sound +on account of the sparkle: and Comedy lifts women to a station offering +them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when they have +it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the Comedy, the more +prominent the part they enjoy in it. Dorine in the Tartuffe is +common-sense incarnate, though palpably a waiting-maid. Célimène +is undisputed mistress of the same attribute in the Misanthrope; wiser +as a woman than Alceste as man. In Congreve’s Way of the +World, Millamant overshadows Mirabel, the sprightliest male figure of +English comedy.</p> +<p>But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, +who fence with men and pass their guard, are heartless! Is it +not preferable to be the pretty idiot, the passive beauty, the adorable +bundle of caprices, very feminine, very sympathetic, of romantic and +sentimental fiction? Our women are taught to think so. The +Agnès of the École des Femmes should be a lesson for men. +The heroines of Comedy are like women of the world, not necessarily +heartless from being clear-sighted: they seem so to the sentimentally-reared +only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not wandering +vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition +of their battle with men, and that of men with them: and as the two, +however divergent, both look on one object, namely, Life, the gradual +similarity of their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. +The Comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual +likeness; he is for saying that when they draw together in social life +their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the similarity +of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the nursery. +Philosopher and Comic poet are of a cousinship in the eye they cast +on life: and they are equally unpopular with our wilful English of the +hazy region and the ideal that is not to be disturbed.</p> +<p>Thus, for want of instruction in the Comic idea, we lose a large +audience among our cultivated middle class that we should expect to +support Comedy. The sentimentalist is as averse as the Puritan +and as the Bacchanalian.</p> +<p>Our traditions are unfortunate. The public taste is with the +idle laughers, and still inclines to follow them. It may be shown +by an analysis of Wycherley’s Plain Dealer, a coarse prose adaption +of the Misanthrope, stuffed with lumps of realism in a vulgarized theme +to hit the mark of English appetite, that we have in it the keynote +of the Comedy of our stage. It is Molière travestied, with +the hoof to his foot and hair on the pointed tip of his ear. And +how difficult it is for writers to disentangle themselves from bad traditions +is noticeable when we find Goldsmith, who had grave command of the Comic +in narrative, producing an elegant farce for a Comedy; and Fielding, +who was a master of the Comic both in narrative and in dialogue, not +even approaching to the presentable in farce.</p> +<p>These bad traditions of Comedy affect us not only on the stage, but +in our literature, and may be tracked into our social life. They +are the ground of the heavy moralizings by which we are outwearied, +about Life as a Comedy, and Comedy as a jade, <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> +when popular writers, conscious of fatigue in creativeness, desire to +be cogent in a modish cynicism: perversions of the idea of life, and +of the proper esteem for the society we have wrested from brutishness, +and would carry higher. Stock images of this description are accepted +by the timid and the sensitive, as well as by the saturnine, quite seriously; +for not many look abroad with their own eyes, fewer still have the habit +of thinking for themselves. Life, we know too well, is not a Comedy, +but something strangely mixed; nor is Comedy a vile mask. The +corrupted importation from France was noxious; a noble entertainment +spoilt to suit the wretched taste of a villanous age; and the later +imitations of it, partly drained of its poison and made decorous, became +tiresome, notwithstanding their fun, in the perpetual recurring of the +same situations, owing to the absence of original study and vigour of +conception. Scene v. Act 2 of the Misanthrope, owing, no doubt, +to the fact of our not producing matter for original study, is repeated +in succession by Wycherley, Congreve, and Sheridan, and as it is at +second hand, we have it done cynically—or such is the tone; in +the manner of ‘below stairs.’ Comedy thus treated +may be accepted as a version of the ordinary worldly understanding of +our social life; at least, in accord with the current dicta concerning +it. The epigrams can be made; but it is uninstructive, rather +tending to do disservice. Comedy justly treated, as you find it +in Molière, whom we so clownishly mishandled, the Comedy of Molière +throws no infamous reflection upon life. It is deeply conceived, +in the first place, and therefore it cannot be impure. Meditate +on that statement. Never did man wield so shrieking a scourge +upon vice, but his consummate self-mastery is not shaken while administering +it. Tartuffe and Harpagon, in fact, are made each to whip himself +and his class, the false pietists, and the insanely covetous. +Molière has only set them in motion. He strips Folly to +the skin, displays the imposture of the creature, and is content to +offer her better clothing, with the lesson Chrysale reads to Philaminte +and Bélise. He conceives purely, and he writes purely, +in the simplest language, the simplest of French verse. The source +of his wit is clear reason: it is a fountain of that soil; and it springs +to vindicate reason, common-sense, rightness and justice; for no vain +purpose ever. The wit is of such pervading spirit that it inspires +a pun with meaning and interest. <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a> +His moral does not hang like a tail, or preach from one character incessantly +cocking an eye at the audience, as in recent realistic French Plays: +but is in the heart of his work, throbbing with every pulsation of an +organic structure. If Life is likened to the comedy of Molière, +there is no scandal in the comparison.</p> +<p>Congreve’s Way of the World is an exception to our other comedies, +his own among them, by virtue of the remarkable brilliancy of the writing, +and the figure of Millamant. The comedy has no idea in it, beyond +the stale one, that so the world goes; and it concludes with the jaded +discovery of a document at a convenient season for the descent of the +curtain. A plot was an afterthought with Congreve. By the +help of a wooden villain (Maskwell) marked Gallows to the flattest eye, +he gets a sort of plot in The Double Dealer. <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a> +His Way of the World might be called The Conquest of a Town Coquette, +and Millamant is a perfect portrait of a coquette, both in her resistance +to Mirabel and the manner of her surrender, and also in her tongue. +The wit here is not so salient as in certain passages of Love for Love, +where Valentine feigns madness or retorts on his father, or Mrs. Frail +rejoices in the harmlessness of wounds to a woman’s virtue, if +she ‘keeps them from air.’ In The Way of the World, +it appears less prepared in the smartness, and is more diffused in the +more characteristic style of the speakers. Here, however, as elsewhere, +his famous wit is like a bully-fencer, not ashamed to lay traps for +its exhibition, transparently petulant for the train between certain +ordinary words and the powder-magazine of the improprieties to be fired. +Contrast the wit of Congreve with Molière’s. That +of the first is a Toledo blade, sharp, and wonderfully supple for steel; +cast for duelling, restless in the scabbard, being so pretty when out +of it. To shine, it must have an adversary. Molière’s +wit is like a running brook, with innumerable fresh lights on it at +every turn of the wood through which its business is to find a way. +It does not run in search of obstructions, to be noisy over them; but +when dead leaves and viler substances are heaped along the course, its +natural song is heightened. Without effort, and with no dazzling +flashes of achievement, it is full of healing, the wit of good breeding, +the wit of wisdom.</p> +<p>‘Genuine humour and true wit,’ says Landor, <a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7">{7}</a> +‘require a sound and capacious mind, which is always a grave one. +Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been +<i>rêveurs</i>. Few men have been graver than Pascal. +Few men have been wittier.’</p> +<p>To apply the citation of so great a brain as Pascal’s to our +countryman would be unfair. Congreve had a certain soundness of +mind; of capacity, in the sense intended by Landor, he had little. +Judging him by his wit, he performed some happy thrusts, and taking +it for genuine, it is a surface wit, neither rising from a depth nor +flowing from a spring.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘On voit qu’il se travaille à dire +de bons mots.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He drives the poor hack word, ‘fool,’ as cruelly to the +market for wit as any of his competitors. Here is an example, +that has been held up for eulogy:</p> +<blockquote><p>WITWOUD: He has brought me a letter from the fool my +brother, etc. etc.</p> +<p>MIRABEL: A fool, and your brother, Witwoud?</p> +<p>WITWOUD: Ay, ay, my half-brother. My half-brother he is; no +nearer, upon my honour.</p> +<p>MIRABEL: Then ’tis possible he may be but half a fool.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>By evident preparation. This is a sort of wit one remembers +to have heard at school, of a brilliant outsider; perhaps to have been +guilty of oneself, a trifle later. It was, no doubt, a blaze of +intellectual fireworks to the bumpkin squire, who came to London to +go to the theatre and learn manners.</p> +<p>Where Congreve excels all his English rivals is in his literary force, +and a succinctness of style peculiar to him. He had correct judgement, +a correct ear, readiness of illustration within a narrow range, in snapshots +of the obvious at the obvious, and copious language. He hits the +mean of a fine style and a natural in dialogue. He is at once +precise and voluble. If you have ever thought upon style you will +acknowledge it to be a signal accomplishment. In this he is a +classic, and is worthy of treading a measure with Molière. +The Way of the World may be read out currently at a first glance, so +sure are the accents of the emphatic meaning to strike the eye, perforce +of the crispness and cunning polish of the sentences. You have +not to look over them before you confide yourself to him; he will carry +you safe. Sheridan imitated, but was far from surpassing him. +The flow of boudoir Billingsgate in Lady Wishfort is unmatched for the +vigour and pointedness of the tongue. It spins along with a final +ring, like the voice of Nature in a fury, and is, indeed, racy eloquence +of the elevated fishwife.</p> +<p>Millamant is an admirable, almost a lovable heroine. It is +a piece of genius in a writer to make a woman’s manner of speech +portray her. You feel sensible of her presence in every line of +her speaking. The stipulations with her lover in view of marriage, +her fine lady’s delicacy, and fine lady’s easy evasions +of indelicacy, coquettish airs, and playing with irresolution, which +in a common maid would be bashfulness, until she submits to ‘dwindle +into a wife,’ as she says, form a picture that lives in the frame, +and is in harmony with Mirabel’s description of her:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Here she comes, i’ faith, full sail, with +her fan spread, and her streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And, after an interview:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Think of you! To think of a whirlwind, though +’twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady contemplation, +a very tranquillity of mind and mansion.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is a picturesqueness, as of Millamant and no other, in her +voice, when she is encouraged to take Mirabel by Mrs. Fainall, who is +‘sure she has a mind to him’:</p> +<blockquote><p>MILLAMANT: Are you? I think I have—and the +horrid man looks as if he thought so too, etc. etc.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One hears the tones, and sees the sketch and colour of the whole +scene in reading it.</p> +<p>Célimène is behind Millamant in vividness. An +air of bewitching whimsicality hovers over the graces of this Comic +heroine, like the lively conversational play of a beautiful mouth.</p> +<p>But in wit she is no rival of Célimène. What +she utters adds to her personal witchery, and is not further memorable. +She is a flashing portrait, and a type of the superior ladies who do +not think, not of those who do. In representing a class, therefore, +it is a lower class, in the proportion that one of Gainsborough’s +full-length aristocratic women is below the permanent impressiveness +of a fair Venetian head.</p> +<p>Millamant side by side with Célimène is an example +of how far the realistic painting of a character can be carried to win +our favour; and of where it falls short. Célimène +is a woman’s mind in movement, armed with an ungovernable wit; +with perspicacious clear eyes for the world, and a very distinct knowledge +that she belongs to the world, and is most at home in it. She +is attracted to Alceste by her esteem for his honesty; she cannot avoid +seeing where the good sense of the man is diseased.</p> +<p>Rousseau, in his letter to D’Alembert on the subject of the +Misanthrope, discusses the character of Alceste, as though Molière +had put him forth for an absolute example of misanthropy; whereas Alceste +is only a misanthrope of the circle he finds himself placed in: he has +a touching faith in the virtue residing in the country, and a critical +love of sweet simpleness. Nor is he the principal person of the +comedy to which he gives a name. He is only passively comic. +Célimène is the active spirit. While he is denouncing +and railing, the trial is imposed upon her to make the best of him, +and control herself, as much as a witty woman, eagerly courted, can +do. By appreciating him she practically confesses her faultiness, +and she is better disposed to meet him half-way than he is to bend an +inch: only she is <i>une âme de vingt ans</i>, the world is pleasant, +and if the gilded flies of the Court are silly, uncompromising fanatics +have their ridiculous features as well. Can she abandon the life +they make agreeable to her, for a man who will not be guided by the +common sense of his class; and who insists on plunging into one extreme—equal +to suicide in her eyes—to avoid another? That is the comic +question of the Misanthrope. Why will he not continue to mix with +the world smoothly, appeased by the flattery of her secret and really +sincere preference of him, and taking his revenge in satire of it, as +she does from her own not very lofty standard, and will by and by do +from his more exalted one?</p> +<p>Célimène is worldliness: Alceste is unworldliness. +It does not quite imply unselfishness; and that is perceived by her +shrewd head. Still he is a very uncommon figure in her circle, +and she esteems him, <i>l’homme aux rubans verts</i>, ‘who +sometimes diverts but more often horribly vexes her,’ as she can +say of him when her satirical tongue is on the run. Unhappily +the soul of truth in him, which wins her esteem, refuses to be tamed, +or silent, or unsuspicious, and is the perpetual obstacle to their good +accord. He is that melancholy person, the critic of everybody +save himself; intensely sensitive to the faults of others, wounded by +them; in love with his own indubitable honesty, and with his ideal of +the simpler form of life befitting it: qualities which constitute the +satirist. He is a Jean Jacques of the Court. His proposal +to Célimène when he pardons her, that she should follow +him in flying humankind, and his frenzy of detestation of her at her +refusal, are thoroughly in the mood of Jean Jacques. He is an +impracticable creature of a priceless virtue; but Célimène +may feel that to fly with him to the desert: that is from the Court +to the country</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Où d’être homme d’honneur +on ait la liberté,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>she is likely to find herself the companion of a starving satirist, +like that poor princess who ran away with the waiting-man, and when +both were hungry in the forest, was ordered to give him flesh. +She is a <i>fieffée</i> coquette, rejoicing in her wit and her +attractions, and distinguished by her inclination for Alceste in the +midst of her many other lovers; only she finds it hard to cut them off—what +woman with a train does not?—and when the exposure of her naughty +wit has laid her under their rebuke, she will do the utmost she can: +she will give her hand to honesty, but she cannot quite abandon worldliness. +She would be unwise if she did.</p> +<p>The fable is thin. Our pungent contrivers of plots would see +no indication of life in the outlines. The life of the comedy +is in the idea. As with the singing of the sky-lark out of sight, +you must love the bird to be attentive to the song, so in this highest +flight of the Comic Muse, you must love pure Comedy warmly to understand +the Misanthrope: you must be receptive of the idea of Comedy. +And to love Comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women +well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope +for good.</p> +<p>Menander wrote a comedy called Misogynes, said to have been the most +celebrated of his works. This misogynist is a married man, according +to the fragment surviving, and is a hater of women through hatred of +his wife. He generalizes upon them from the example of this lamentable +adjunct of his fortunes, and seems to have got the worst of it in the +contest with her, which is like the issue in reality, in the polite +world. He seems also to have deserved it, which may be as true +to the copy. But we are unable to say whether the wife was a good +voice of her sex: or how far Menander in this instance raised the idea +of woman from the mire it was plunged into by the comic poets, or rather +satiric dramatists, of the middle period of Greek Comedy preceding him +and the New Comedy, who devoted their wit chiefly to the abuse, and +for a diversity, to the eulogy of extra-mural ladies of conspicuous +fame. Menander idealized them without purposely elevating. +He satirized a certain Thais, and his Thais of the Eunuchus of Terence +is neither professionally attractive nor repulsive; his picture of the +two Andrians, Chrysis and her sister, is nowhere to be matched for tenderness. +But the condition of honest women in his day did not permit of the freedom +of action and fencing dialectic of a Célimène, and consequently +it is below our mark of pure Comedy.</p> +<p>Sainte-Beuve conjures up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love +of me love Terence. It is through love of Terence that moderns +are able to love Menander; and what is preserved of Terence has not +apparently given us the best of the friend of Epicurus. Μισουμενος +the lover taken in horror, and Περικειρομενη +the damsel shorn of her locks, have a promising sound for scenes of +jealousy and a too masterful display of lordly authority, leading to +regrets, of the kind known to intemperate men who imagined they were +fighting with the weaker, as the fragments indicate.</p> +<p>Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, +the Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus. These two are inferior +in comic action and the peculiar sweetness of Menander to the Andria, +the Adelphi, the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: but Phormio is +a more dashing and amusing convivial parasite than the Gnatho of the +last-named comedy. There were numerous rivals of whom we know +next to nothing—except by the quotations of Athenæus and +Plutarch, and the Greek grammarians who cited them to support a dictum—in +this as in the preceding periods of comedy in Athens, for Menander’s +plays are counted by many scores, and they were crowned by the prize +only eight times. The favourite poet with critics, in Greece as +in Rome, was Menander; and if some of his rivals here and there surpassed +him in comic force, and out-stripped him in competition by an appositeness +to the occasion that had previously in the same way deprived the genius +of Aristophanes of its due reward in Clouds and Birds, his position +as chief of the comic poets of his age was unchallenged. Plutarch +very unnecessarily drags Aristophanes into a comparison with him, to +the confusion of the older poet. Their aims, the matter they dealt +in, and the times, were quite dissimilar. But it is no wonder +that Plutarch, writing when Athenian beauty of style was the delight +of his patrons, should rank Menander at the highest. In what degree +of faithfulness Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of the +passage in the Adelphi taken from Diphilus, <i>verbum de verbo</i> in +the lovelier scenes—the description of the last words of the dying +Andrian, and of her funeral, for instance—remains conjectural. +For us Terence shares with his master the praise of an amenity that +is like Elysian speech, equable and ever gracious; like the face of +the Andrian’s young sister:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Adeo modesto, adeo venusto, ut nihil supra.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The celebrated ‘flens quam familiariter,’ of which the +closest rendering grounds hopelessly on harsh prose, to express the +sorrowful confidingness of a young girl who has lost her sister and +dearest friend, and has but her lover left to her; ‘she turned +and flung herself on his bosom, weeping as though at home there’: +this our instinct tells us must be Greek, though hardly finer in Greek. +Certain lines of Terence, compared with the original fragments, show +that he embellished them; but his taste was too exquisite for him to +do other than devote his genius to the honest translation of such pieces +as the above. Menander, then; with him, through the affinity of +sympathy, Terence; and Shakespeare and Molière have this beautiful +translucency of language: and the study of the comic poets might be +recommended, if for that only.</p> +<p>A singular ill fate befell the writings of Menander. What we +have of him in Terence was chosen probably to please the cultivated +Romans; <a name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8">{8}</a> and is +a romantic play with a comic intrigue, obtained in two instances, the +Andria and the Eunuchus, by rolling a couple of his originals into one. +The titles of certain of the lost plays indicate the comic illumining +character; a Self-pitier, a Self-chastiser, an Ill-tempered man, a Superstitious, +an Incredulous, etc., point to suggestive domestic themes.</p> +<p>Terence forwarded manuscript translations from Greece, that suffered +shipwreck; he, who could have restored the treasure, died on the way +home. The zealots of Byzantium completed the work of destruction. +So we have the four comedies of Terence, numbering six of Menander, +with a few sketches of plots—one of them, the Thesaurus, introduces +a miser, whom we should have liked to contrast with Harpagon—and +a multitude of small fragments of a sententious cast, fitted for quotation. +Enough remains to make his greatness felt.</p> +<p>Without undervaluing other writers of Comedy, I think it may be said +that Menander and Molière stand alone specially as comic poets +of the feelings and the idea. In each of them there is a conception +of the Comic that refines even to pain, as in the Menedemus of the Heautontimorumenus, +and in the Misanthrope. Menander and Molière have given +the principal types to Comedy hitherto. The Micio and Demea of +the Adelphi, with their opposing views of the proper management of youth, +are still alive; the Sganarelles and Arnolphes of the École des +Maris and the École des Femmes, are not all buried. Tartuffe +is the father of the hypocrites; Orgon of the dupes; Thraso, of the +braggadocios; Alceste of the ‘Manlys’; Davus and Syrus of +the intriguing valets, the Scapins and Figaros. Ladies that soar +in the realms of Rose-Pink, whose language wears the nodding plumes +of intellectual conceit, are traceable to Philaminte and Bélise +of the Femmes Savantes: and the mordant witty women have the tongue +of Célimène. The reason is, that these two poets +idealized upon life: the foundation of their types is real and in the +quick, but they painted with spiritual strength, which is the solid +in Art.</p> +<p>The idealistic conceptions of Comedy gives breadth and opportunities +of daring to Comic genius, and helps to solve the difficulties it creates. +How, for example, shall an audience be assured that an evident and monstrous +dupe is actually deceived without being an absolute fool? In Le +Tartuffe the note of high Comedy strikes when Orgon on his return home +hears of his idol’s excellent appetite. ‘<i>Le pauvre +homme</i>!’ he exclaims. He is told that the wife of his +bosom has been unwell. ‘<i>Et Tartuffe</i>?’ he asks, +impatient to hear him spoken of, his mind suffused with the thought +of Tartuffe, crazy with tenderness, and again he croons, ‘<i>Le +pauvre homme</i>!’ It is the mother’s cry of pitying +delight at a nurse’s recital of the feats in young animal gluttony +of her cherished infant. After this masterstroke of the Comic, +you not only put faith in Orgon’s roseate prepossession, you share +it with him by comic sympathy, and can listen with no more than a tremble +of the laughing muscles to the instance he gives of the sublime humanity +of Tartuffe:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Un rien presque suffit pour le scandaliser,<br /> +Jusque-là, qu’il se vint l’autre jour accuser<br /> +D’avoir pris une puce en faisant sa prière,<br /> +Et de l’avoir tuée avec trop de colère.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And to have killed it too wrathfully! Translating Molière +is like humming an air one has heard performed by an accomplished violinist +of the pure tones without flourish.</p> +<p>Orgon, awakening to find another dupe in Madame Pernelle, incredulous +of the revelations which have at last opened his own besotted eyes, +is a scene of the double Comic, vivified by the spell previously cast +on the mind. There we feel the power of the poet’s creation; +and in the sharp light of that sudden turn the humanity is livelier +than any realistic work can make it.</p> +<p>Italian Comedy gives many hints for a Tartuffe; but they may be found +in Boccaccio, as well as in Machiavelli’s Mandragola. The +Frate Timoteo of this piece is only a very oily friar, compliantly assisting +an intrigue with ecclesiastical sophisms (to use the mildest word) for +payment. Frate Timoteo has a fine Italian priestly pose.</p> +<p>DONNA: Credete voi, che’l Turco passi questo anno in Italia?</p> +<p>F. TIM.: Se voi non fate orazione, si.</p> +<p>Priestly arrogance and unctuousness, and trickeries and casuistries, +cannot be painted without our discovering a likeness in the long Italian +gallery. Goldoni sketched the Venetian manners of the decadence +of the Republic with a French pencil, and was an Italian Scribe in style.</p> +<p>The Spanish stage is richer in such Comedies as that which furnished +the idea of the Menteur to Corneille. But you must force yourself +to believe that this liar is not forcing his vein when he piles lie +upon lie. There is no preceding touch to win the mind to credulity. +Spanish Comedy is generally in sharp outline, as of skeletons; in quick +movement, as of marionnettes. The Comedy might be performed by +a troop of the <i>corps de ballet</i>; and in the recollection of the +reading it resolves to an animated shuffle of feet. It is, in +fact, something other than the true idea of Comedy. Where the +sexes are separated, men and women grow, as the Portuguese call it, +<i>affaimados</i> of one another, famine-stricken; and all the tragic +elements are on the stage. Don Juan is a comic character that +sends souls flying: nor does the humour of the breaking of a dozen women’s +hearts conciliate the Comic Muse with the drawing of blood.</p> +<p>German attempts at Comedy remind one vividly of Heine’s image +of his country in the dancing of Atta Troll. Lessing tried his +hand at it, with a sobering effect upon readers. The intention +to produce the reverse effect is just visible, and therein, like the +portly graces of the poor old Pyrenean Bear poising and twirling on +his right hind-leg and his left, consists the fun. Jean Paul Richter +gives the best edition of the German Comic in the contrast of Siebenkäs +with his Lenette. A light of the Comic is in Goethe; enough to +complete the splendid figure of the man, but no more.</p> +<p>The German literary laugh, like the timed awakenings of their Barbarossa +in the hollows of the Untersberg, is infrequent, and rather monstrous—never +a laugh of men and women in concert. It comes of unrefined abstract +fancy, grotesque or grim, or gross, like the peculiar humours of their +little earthmen. Spiritual laughter they have not yet attained +to: sentimentalism waylays them in the flight. Here and there +a Volkslied or Märchen shows a national aptitude for stout animal +laughter; and we see that the literature is built on it, which is hopeful +so far; but to enjoy it, to enter into the philosophy of the Broad Grin, +that seems to hesitate between the skull and the embryo, and reaches +its perfection in breadth from the pulling of two square fingers at +the corners of the mouth, one must have aid of ‘the good Rhine +wine,’ and be of German blood unmixed besides. This treble-Dutch +lumbersomeness of the Comic spirit is of itself exclusive of the idea +of Comedy, and the poor voice allowed to women in German domestic life +will account for the absence of comic dialogues reflecting upon life +in that land. I shall speak of it again in the second section +of this lecture.</p> +<p>Eastward you have total silence of Comedy among a people intensely +susceptible to laughter, as the Arabian Nights will testify. Where +the veil is over women’s-faces, you cannot have society, without +which the senses are barbarous and the Comic spirit is driven to the +gutters of grossness to slake its thirst. Arabs in this respect +are worse than Italians—much worse than Germans; just in the degree +that their system of treating women is worse.</p> +<p>M. Saint-Marc Girardin, the excellent French essayist and master +of critical style, tells of a conversation he had once with an Arab +gentleman on the topic of the different management of these difficult +creatures in Orient and in Occident: and the Arab spoke in praise of +many good results of the greater freedom enjoyed by Western ladies, +and the charm of conversing with them. He was questioned why his +countrymen took no measures to grant them something of that kind of +liberty. He jumped out of his individuality in a twinkling, and +entered into the sentiments of his race, replying, from the pinnacle +of a splendid conceit, with affected humility of manner: ‘<i>You</i> +can look on them without perturbation—but <i>we</i>!’ . +. . And after this profoundly comic interjection, he added, in deep +tones, ‘The very face of a woman!’ Our representative +of temperate notions demurely consented that the Arab’s pride +of inflammability should insist on the prudery of the veil as the civilizing +medium of his race.</p> +<p>There has been fun in Bagdad. But there never will be civilization +where Comedy is not possible; and that comes of some degree of social +equality of the sexes. I am not quoting the Arab to exhort and +disturb the somnolent East; rather for cultivated women to recognize +that the Comic Muse is one of their best friends. They are blind +to their interests in swelling the ranks of the sentimentalists. +Let them look with their clearest vision abroad and at home. They +will see that where they have no social freedom, Comedy is absent: where +they are household drudges, the form of Comedy is primitive: where they +are tolerably independent, but uncultivated, exciting melodrama takes +its place and a sentimental version of them. Yet the Comic will +out, as they would know if they listened to some of the private conversations +of men whose minds are undirected by the Comic Muse: as the sentimental +man, to his astonishment, would know likewise, if he in similar fashion +could receive a lesson. But where women are on the road to an +equal footing with men, in attainments and in liberty—in what +they have won for themselves, and what has been granted them by a fair +civilization—there, and only waiting to be transplanted from life +to the stage, or the novel, or the poem, pure Comedy flourishes, and +is, as it would help them to be, the sweetest of diversions, the wisest +of delightful companions.</p> +<p>Now, to look about us in the present time, I think it will be acknowledged +that in neglecting the cultivation of the Comic idea, we are losing +the aid of a powerful auxiliar. You see Folly perpetually sliding +into new shapes in a society possessed of wealth and leisure, with many +whims, many strange ailments and strange doctors. Plenty of common-sense +is in the world to thrust her back when she pretends to empire. +But the first-born of common-sense, the vigilant Comic, which is the +genius of thoughtful laughter, which would readily extinguish her at +the outset, is not serving as a public advocate.</p> +<p>You will have noticed the disposition of common-sense, under pressure +of some pertinacious piece of light-headedness, to grow impatient and +angry. That is a sign of the absence, or at least of the dormancy, +of the Comic idea. For Folly is the natural prey of the Comic, +known to it in all her transformations, in every disguise; and it is +with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox, that +it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having her, +allowing her no rest.</p> +<p>Contempt is a sentiment that cannot be entertained by comic intelligence. +What is it but an excuse to be idly minded, or personally lofty, or +comfortably narrow, not perfectly humane? If we do not feign when +we say that we despise Folly, we shut the brain. There is a disdainful +attitude in the presence of Folly, partaking of the foolishness to Comic +perception: and anger is not much less foolish than disdain. The +struggle we have to conduct is essence against essence. Let no +one doubt of the sequel when this emanation of what is firmest in us +is launched to strike down the daughter of Unreason and Sentimentalism: +such being Folly’s parentage, when it is respectable.</p> +<p>Our modern system of combating her is too long defensive, and carried +on too ploddingly with concrete engines of war in the attack. +She has time to get behind entrenchments. She is ready to stand +a siege, before the heavily armed man of science and the writer of the +leading article or elaborate essay have primed their big guns. +It should be remembered that she has charms for the multitude; and an +English multitude seeing her make a gallant fight of it will be half +in love with her, certainly willing to lend her a cheer. Benevolent +subscriptions assist her to hire her own man of science, her own organ +in the Press. If ultimately she is cast out and overthrown, she +can stretch a finger at gaps in our ranks. She can say that she +commanded an army and seduced men, whom we thought sober men and safe, +to act as her lieutenants. We learn rather gloomily, after she +has flashed her lantern, that we have in our midst able men and men +with minds for whom there is no pole-star in intellectual navigation. +Comedy, or the Comic element, is the specific for the poison of delusion +while Folly is passing from the state of vapour to substantial form.</p> +<p>O for a breath of Aristophanes, Rabelais, Voltaire, Cervantes, Fielding, +Molière! These are spirits that, if you know them well, +will come when you do call. You will find the very invocation +of them act on you like a renovating air—the South-west coming +off the sea, or a cry in the Alps.</p> +<p>No one would presume to say that we are deficient in jokers. +They abound, and the organisation directing their machinery to shoot +them in the wake of the leading article and the popular sentiment is +good.</p> +<p>But the Comic differs from them in addressing the wits for laughter; +and the sluggish wits want some training to respond to it, whether in +public life or private, and particularly when the feelings are excited.</p> +<p>The sense of the Comic is much blunted by habits of punning and of +using humouristic phrase: the trick of employing Johnsonian polysyllables +to treat of the infinitely little. And it really may be humorous, +of a kind, yet it will miss the point by going too much round about +it.</p> +<p>A certain French Duke Pasquier died, some years back, at a very advanced +age. He had been the venerable Duke Pasquier in his later years +up to the period of his death. There was a report of Duke Pasquier +that he was a man of profound egoism. Hence an argument arose, +and was warmly sustained, upon the excessive selfishness of those who, +in a world of troubles, and calls to action, and innumerable duties, +husband their strength for the sake of living on. Can it be possible, +the argument ran, for a truly generous heart to continue beating up +to the age of a hundred? Duke Pasquier was not without his defenders, +who likened him to the oak of the forest—a venerable comparison.</p> +<p>The argument was conducted on both sides with spirit and earnestness, +lightened here and there by frisky touches of the polysyllabic playful, +reminding one of the serious pursuit of their fun by truant boys, that +are assured they are out of the eye of their master, and now and then +indulge in an imitation of him. And well might it be supposed +that the Comic idea was asleep, not overlooking them! It resolved +at last to this, that either Duke Pasquier was a scandal on our humanity +in clinging to life so long, or that he honoured it by so sturdy a resistance +to the enemy. As one who has entangled himself in a labyrinth +is glad to get out again at the entrance, the argument ran about to +conclude with its commencement.</p> +<p>Now, imagine a master of the Comic treating this theme, and particularly +the argument on it. Imagine an Aristophanic comedy of THE CENTENARIAN, +with choric praises of heroical early death, and the same of a stubborn +vitality, and the poet laughing at the chorus; and the grand question +for contention in dialogue, as to the exact age when a man should die, +to the identical minute, that he may preserve the respect of his fellows, +followed by a systematic attempt to make an accurate measurement in +parallel lines, with a tough rope-yarn by one party, and a string of +yawns by the other, of the veteran’s power of enduring life, and +our capacity for enduring <i>him</i>, with tremendous pulling on both +sides.</p> +<p>Would not the Comic view of the discussion illumine it and the disputants +like very lightning? There are questions, as well as persons, +that only the Comic can fitly touch.</p> +<p>Aristophanes would probably have crowned the ancient tree, with the +consolatory observation to the haggard line of long-expectant heirs +of the Centenarian, that they live to see the blessedness of coming +of a strong stock. The shafts of his ridicule would mainly have +been aimed at the disputants. For the sole ground of the argument +was the old man’s character, and sophists are not needed to demonstrate +that we can very soon have too much of a bad thing. A Centenarian +does not necessarily provoke the Comic idea, nor does the corpse of +a duke. It is not provoked in the order of nature, until we draw +its penetrating attentiveness to some circumstance with which we have +been mixing our private interests, or our speculative obfuscation. +Dulness, insensible to the Comic, has the privilege of arousing it; +and the laying of a dull finger on matters of human life is the surest +method of establishing electrical communications with a battery of laughter—where +the Comic idea is prevalent.</p> +<p>But if the Comic idea prevailed with us, and we had an Aristophanes +to barb and wing it, we should be breathing air of Athens. Prosers +now pouring forth on us like public fountains would be cut short in +the street and left blinking, dumb as pillar-posts, with letters thrust +into their mouths. We should throw off incubus, our dreadful familiar—by +some called boredom—whom it is our present humiliation to be just +alive enough to loathe, never quick enough to foil. There would +be a bright and positive, clear Hellenic perception of facts. +The vapours of Unreason and Sentimentalism would be blown away before +they were productive. Where would Pessimist and Optimist be? +They would in any case have a diminished audience. Yet possibly +the change of despots, from good-natured old obtuseness to keen-edged +intelligence, which is by nature merciless, would be more than we could +bear. The rupture of the link between dull people, consisting +in the fraternal agreement that something is too clever for them, and +a shot beyond them, is not to be thought of lightly; for, slender though +the link may seem, it is equivalent to a cement forming a concrete of +dense cohesion, very desirable in the estimation of the statesman.</p> +<p>A political Aristophanes, taking advantage of his lyrical Bacchic +licence, was found too much for political Athens. I would not +ask to have him revived, but that the sharp light of such a spirit as +his might be with us to strike now and then on public affairs, public +themes, to make them spin along more briskly.</p> +<p>He hated with the politician’s fervour the sophist who corrupted +simplicity of thought, the poet who destroyed purity of style, the demagogue, +‘the saw-toothed monster,’ who, as he conceived, chicaned +the mob, and he held his own against them by strength of laughter, until +fines, the curtailing of his Comic licence in the chorus, and ultimately +the ruin of Athens, which could no longer support the expense of the +chorus, threw him altogether on dialogue, and brought him under the +law. After the catastrophe, the poet, who had ever been gazing +back at the men of Marathon and Salamis, must have felt that he had +foreseen it; and that he was wise when he pleaded for peace, and derided +military coxcombry, and the captious old creature Demus, we can admit. +He had the Comic poet’s gift of common-sense—which does +not always include political intelligence; yet his political tendency +raised him above the Old Comedy turn for uproarious farce. He +abused Socrates, but Xenophon, the disciple of Socrates, by his trained +rhetoric saved the Ten Thousand. Aristophanes might say that if +his warnings had been followed there would have been no such thing as +a mercenary Greek expedition under Cyrus. Athens, however, was +on a landslip, falling; none could arrest it. To gaze back, to +uphold the old times, was a most natural conservatism, and fruitless. +The aloe had bloomed. Whether right or wrong in his politics and +his criticisms, and bearing in mind the instruments he played on and +the audience he had to win, there is an idea in his comedies: it is +the Idea of Good Citizenship.</p> +<p>He is not likely to be revived. He stands, like Shakespeare, +an unapproachable. Swift says of him, with a loving chuckle:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘But as for Comic Aristophanes,<br /> +The dog too witty and too prófane is.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Aristophanes was ‘prófane,’ under satiric direction, +unlike his rivals Cratinus, Phrynichus, Ameipsias, Eupolis, and others, +if we are to believe him, who in their extraordinary Donnybrook Fair +of the day of Comedy, thumped one another and everybody else with absolute +heartiness, as he did, but aimed at small game, and dragged forth particular +women, which he did not. He is an aggregate of many men, all of +a certain greatness. We may build up a conception of his powers +if we mount Rabelais upon Hudibras, lift him with the songfulness of +Shelley, give him a vein of Heinrich Heine, and cover him with the mantle +of the Anti-Jacobin, adding (that there may be some Irish in him) a +dash of Grattan, before he is in motion.</p> +<p>But such efforts at conceiving one great one by incorporation of +minors are vain, and cry for excuse. Supposing Wilkes for leading +man in a country constantly plunging into war under some plumed Lamachus, +with enemies periodically firing the land up to the gates of London, +and a Samuel Foote, of prodigious genius, attacking him with ridicule, +I think it gives a notion of the conflict engaged in by Aristophanes. +This laughing bald-pate, as he calls himself, was a Titanic pamphleteer, +using laughter for his political weapon; a laughter without scruple, +the laughter of Hercules. He was primed with wit, as with the +garlic he speaks of giving to the game-cocks, to make them fight the +better. And he was a lyric poet of aërial delicacy, with +the homely song of a jolly national poet, and a poet of such feeling +that the comic mask is at times no broader than a cloth on a face to +show the serious features of our common likeness. He is not to +be revived; but if his method were studied, some of the fire in him +would come to us, and we might be revived.</p> +<p>Taking them generally, the English public are most in sympathy with +this primitive Aristophanic comedy, wherein the comic is capped by the +grotesque, irony tips the wit, and satire is a naked sword. They +have the basis of the Comic in them: an esteem for common-sense. +They cordially dislike the reverse of it. They have a rich laugh, +though it is not the <i>gros rire</i> of the Gaul tossing <i>gros sel</i>, +nor the polished Frenchman’s mentally digestive laugh. And +if they have now, like a monarch with a troop of dwarfs, too many jesters +kicking the dictionary about, to let them reflect that they are dull, +occasionally, like the pensive monarch surprising himself with an idea +of an idea of his own, they look so. And they are given to looking +in the glass. They must see that something ails them. How +much even the better order of them will endure, without a thought of +the defensive, when the person afflicting them is protected from satire, +we read in Memoirs of a Preceding Age, where the vulgarly tyrannous +hostess of a great house of reception shuffled the guests and played +them like a pack of cards, with her exact estimate of the strength of +each one printed on them: and still this house continued to be the most +popular in England; nor did the lady ever appear in print or on the +boards as the comic type that she was.</p> +<p>It has been suggested that they have not yet spiritually comprehended +the signification of living in society; for who are cheerfuller, brisker +of wit, in the fields, and as explorers, colonisers, backwoodsmen? +They are happy in rough exercise, and also in complete repose. +The intermediate condition, when they are called upon to talk to one +another, upon other than affairs of business or their hobbies, reveals +them wearing a curious look of vacancy, as it were the socket of an +eye wanting. The Comic is perpetually springing up in social life, +and, it oppresses them from not being perceived.</p> +<p>Thus, at a dinner-party, one of the guests, who happens to have enrolled +himself in a Burial Company, politely entreats the others to inscribe +their names as shareholders, expatiating on the advantages accruing +to them in the event of their very possible speedy death, the salubrity +of the site, the aptitude of the soil for a quick consumption of their +remains, etc.; and they drink sadness from the incongruous man, and +conceive indigestion, not seeing him in a sharply defined light, that +would bid them taste the comic of him. Or it is mentioned that +a newly elected member of our Parliament celebrates his arrival at eminence +by the publication of a book on cab-fares, dedicated to a beloved female +relative deceased, and the comment on it is the word ‘Indeed.’ +But, merely for a contrast, turn to a not uncommon scene of yesterday +in the hunting-field, where a brilliant young rider, having broken his +collar-bone, trots away very soon after, against medical interdict, +half put together in splinters, to the most distant meet of his neighbourhood, +sure of escaping his doctor, who is the first person he encounters. +‘I came here purposely to avoid you,’ says the patient. +‘I came here purposely to take care of you,’ says the doctor. +Off they go, and come to a swollen brook. The patient clears it +handsomely: the doctor tumbles in. All the field are alive with +the heartiest relish of every incident and every cross-light on it; +and dull would the man have been thought who had not his word to say +about it when riding home.</p> +<p>In our prose literature we have had delightful Comic writers. +Besides Fielding and Goldsmith, there is Miss Austen, whose Emma and +Mr. Elton might walk straight into a comedy, were the plot arranged +for them. Galt’s neglected novels have some characters and +strokes of shrewd comedy. In our poetic literature the comic is +delicate and graceful above the touch of Italian and French. Generally, +however, the English elect excel in satire, and they are noble humourists. +The national disposition is for hard-hitting, with a moral purpose to +sanction it; or for a rosy, sometimes a larmoyant, geniality, not unmanly +in its verging upon tenderness, and with a singular attraction for thick-headedness, +to decorate it with asses’ ears and the most beautiful sylvan +haloes. But the Comic is a different spirit.</p> +<p>You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able +to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less: and +more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, +and accepting the correction their image of you proposes.</p> +<p>Each one of an affectionate couple may be willing, as we say, to +die for the other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the +right moment; but if the wits were sufficiently quick for them to perceive +that they are in a comic situation, as affectionate couples must be +when they quarrel, they would not wait for the moon or the almanac, +or a Dorine, to bring back the flood-tide of tender feelings, that they +should join hands and lips.</p> +<p>If you detect the ridicule, and your kindliness is chilled by it, +you are slipping into the grasp of Satire.</p> +<p>If instead of falling foul of the ridiculous person with a satiric +rod, to make him writhe and shriek aloud, you prefer to sting him under +a semi-caress, by which he shall in his anguish be rendered dubious +whether indeed anything has hurt him, you are an engine of Irony.</p> +<p>If you laugh all round him, tumble him, roll him about, deal him +a smack, and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you and yours to +your neighbour, spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as +you expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.</p> +<p>The Comic, which is the perceptive, is the governing spirit, awakening +and giving aim to these powers of laughter, but it is not to be confounded +with them: it enfolds a thinner form of them, differing from satire, +in not sharply driving into the quivering sensibilities, and from humour, +in not comforting them and tucking them up, or indicating a broader +than the range of this bustling world to them.</p> +<p>Fielding’s Jonathan Wild presents a case of this peculiar distinction, +when that man of eminent greatness remarks upon the unfairness of a +trial in which the condemnation has been brought about by twelve men +of the opposite party; for it is not satiric, it is not humorous; yet +it is immensely comic to hear a guilty villain protesting that his own +‘party’ should have a voice in the Law. It opens an +avenue into villains’ ratiocination. <a name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9">{9}</a> +And the Comic is not cancelled though we should suppose Jonathan to +be giving play to his humour. I may have dreamed this or had it +suggested to me, for on referring to Jonathan Wild, I do not find it.</p> +<p>Apply the case to the man of deep wit, who is ever certain of his +condemnation by the opposite party, and then it ceases to be comic, +and will be satiric.</p> +<p>The look of Fielding upon Richardson is essentially comic. +His method of correcting the sentimental writer is a mixture of the +comic and the humorous. Parson Adams is a creation of humour. +But both the conception and the presentation of Alceste and of Tartuffe, +of Célimène and Philaminte, are purely comic, addressed +to the intellect: there is no humour in them, and they refresh the intellect +they quicken to detect their comedy, by force of the contrast they offer +between themselves and the wiser world about them; that is to say, society, +or that assemblage of minds whereof the Comic spirit has its origin.</p> +<p>Byron had splendid powers of humour, and the most poetic satire that +we have example of, fusing at times to hard irony. He had no strong +comic sense, or he would not have taken an anti-social position, which +is directly opposed to the Comic; and in his philosophy, judged by philosophers, +he is a comic figure, by reason of this deficiency. ‘So +bald er philosophirt ist er ein Kind,’ Goethe says of him. +Carlyle sees him in this comic light, treats him in the humorous manner.</p> +<p>The Satirist is a moral agent, often a social scavenger, working +on a storage of bile.</p> +<p>The Ironeïst is one thing or another, according to his caprice. +Irony is the humour of satire; it may be savage as in Swift, with a +moral object, or sedate, as in Gibbon, with a malicious. The foppish +irony fretting to be seen, and the irony which leers, that you shall +not mistake its intention, are failures in satiric effort pretending +to the treasures of ambiguity.</p> +<p>The Humourist of mean order is a refreshing laugher, giving tone +to the feelings and sometimes allowing the feelings to be too much for +him. But the humourist of high has an embrace of contrasts beyond +the scope of the Comic poet.</p> +<p>Heart and mind laugh out at Don Quixote, and still you brood on him. +The juxtaposition of the knight and squire is a Comic conception, the +opposition of their natures most humorous. They are as different +as the two hemispheres in the time of Columbus, yet they touch and are +bound in one by laughter. The knight’s great aims and constant +mishaps, his chivalrous valiancy exercised on absurd objects, his good +sense along the highroad of the craziest of expeditions; the compassion +he plucks out of derision, and the admirable figure he preserves while +stalking through the frantically grotesque and burlesque assailing him, +are in the loftiest moods of humour, fusing the Tragic sentiment with +the Comic narrative.</p> +<p>The stroke of the great humourist is world-wide, with lights of Tragedy +in his laughter.</p> +<p>Taking a living great, though not creative, humourist to guide our +description: the skull of Yorick is in his hands in our seasons of festival; +he sees visions of primitive man capering preposterously under the gorgeous +robes of ceremonial. Our souls must be on fire when we wear solemnity, +if we would not press upon his shrewdest nerve. Finite and infinite +flash from one to the other with him, lending him a two-edged thought +that peeps out of his peacefullest lines by fits, like the lantern of +the fire-watcher at windows, going the rounds at night. The comportment +and performances of men in society are to him, by the vivid comparison +with their mortality, more grotesque than respectable. But ask +yourself, Is he always to be relied on for justness? He will fly +straight as the emissary eagle back to Jove at the true Hero. +He will also make as determined a swift descent upon the man of his +wilful choice, whom we cannot distinguish as a true one. This +vast power of his, built up of the feelings and the intellect in union, +is often wanting in proportion and in discretion. Humourists touching +upon History or Society are given to be capricious. They are, +as in the case of Sterne, given to be sentimental; for with them the +feelings are primary, as with singers. Comedy, on the other hand, +is an interpretation of the general mind, and is for that reason of +necessity kept in restraint. The French lay marked stress on <i>mesure +et goût</i>, and they own how much they owe to Molière +for leading them in simple justness and taste. We can teach them +many things; they can teach us in this.</p> +<p>The Comic poet is in the narrow field, or enclosed square, of the +society he depicts; and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of +men’s intellects, with reference to the operation of the social +world upon their characters. He is not concerned with beginnings +or endings or surroundings, but with what you are now weaving. +To understand his work and value it, you must have a sober liking of +your kind and a sober estimate of our civilized qualities. The +aim and business of the Comic poet are misunderstood, his meaning is +not seized nor his point of view taken, when he is accused of dishonouring +our nature and being hostile to sentiment, tending to spitefulness and +making an unfair use of laughter. Those who detect irony in Comedy +do so because they choose to see it in life. Poverty, says the +satirist, has nothing harder in itself than that it makes men ridiculous. +But poverty is never ridiculous to Comic perception until it attempts +to make its rags conceal its bareness in a forlorn attempt at decency, +or foolishly to rival ostentation. Caleb Balderstone, in his endeavour +to keep up the honour of a noble household in a state of beggary, is +an exquisitely comic character. In the case of ‘poor relatives,’ +on the other hand, it is the rich, whom they perplex, that are really +comic; and to laugh at the former, not seeing the comedy of the latter, +is to betray dulness of vision. Humourist and Satirist frequently +hunt together as Ironeïsts in pursuit of the grotesque, to the +exclusion of the Comic. That was an affecting moment in the history +of the Prince Regent, when the First Gentleman of Europe burst into +tears at a sarcastic remark of Beau Brummell’s on the cut of his +coat. Humour, Satire, Irony, pounce on it altogether as their +common prey. The Comic spirit eyes but does not touch it. +Put into action, it would be farcical. It is too gross for Comedy.</p> +<p>Incidents of a kind casting ridicule on our unfortunate nature instead +of our conventional life, provoke derisive laughter, which thwarts the +Comic idea. But derision is foiled by the play of the intellect. +Most of doubtful causes in contest are open to Comic interpretation, +and any intellectual pleading of a doubtful cause contains germs of +an Idea of Comedy.</p> +<p>The laughter of satire is a blow in the back or the face. The +laughter of Comedy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness, nearer +a smile; often no more than a smile. It laughs through the mind, +for the mind directs it; and it might be called the humour of the mind.</p> +<p>One excellent test of the civilization of a country, as I have said, +I take to be the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy; and the test +of true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.</p> +<p>If you believe that our civilization is founded in common-sense (and +it is the first condition of sanity to believe it), you will, when contemplating +men, discern a Spirit overhead; not more heavenly than the light flashed +upward from glassy surfaces, but luminous and watchful; never shooting +beyond them, nor lagging in the rear; so closely attached to them that +it may be taken for a slavish reflex, until its features are studied. +It has the sage’s brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks +at the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle wariness of +half tension. That slim feasting smile, shaped like the long-bow, +was once a big round satyr’s laugh, that flung up the brows like +a fortress lifted by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but +it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight +of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. Its common +aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field +and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels, without any fluttering +eagerness. Men’s future upon earth does not attract it; +their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they +wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, +hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them +self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting +into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short-sightedly, +plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their professions, +and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them in consideration +one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are +false in humility or mined with conceit, individually, or in the bulk—the +Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an oblique light +on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the +Comic Spirit.</p> +<p>Not to distinguish it is to be bull-blind to the spiritual, and to +deny the existence of a mind of man where minds of men are in working +conjunction.</p> +<p>You must, as I have said, believe that our state of society is founded +in common-sense, otherwise you will not be struck by the contrasts the +Comic Spirit perceives, or have it to look to for your consolation. +You will, in fact, be standing in that peculiar oblique beam of light, +yourself illuminated to the general eye as the very object of chase +and doomed quarry of the thing obscure to you. But to feel its +presence and to see it is your assurance that many sane and solid minds +are with you in what you are experiencing: and this of itself spares +you the pain of satirical heat, and the bitter craving to strike heavy +blows. You share the sublime of wrath, that would not have hurt +the foolish, but merely demonstrate their foolishness. Molière +was contented to revenge himself on the critics of the École +des Femmes, by writing the Critique de l’École des Femmes, +one of the wisest as well as the playfullest of studies in criticism. +A perception of the comic spirit gives high fellowship. You become +a citizen of the selecter world, the highest we know of in connection +with our old world, which is not supermundane. Look there for +your unchallengeable upper class! You feel that you are one of +this our civilized community, that you cannot escape from it, and would +not if you could. Good hope sustains you; weariness does not overwhelm +you; in isolation you see no charms for vanity; personal pride is greatly +moderated. Nor shall your title of citizenship exclude you from +worlds of imagination or of devotion. The Comic spirit is not +hostile to the sweetest songfully poetic. Chaucer bubbles with +it: Shakespeare overflows: there is a mild moon’s ray of it (pale +with super-refinement through distance from our flesh and blood planet) +in Comus. Pope has it, and it is the daylight side of the night +half obscuring Cowper. It is only hostile to the priestly element, +when that, by baleful swelling, transcends and overlaps the bounds of +its office: and then, in extreme cases, it is too true to itself to +speak, and veils the lamp: as, for example, the spectacle of Bossuet +over the dead body of Molière: at which the dark angels may, +but men do not laugh.</p> +<p>We have had comic pulpits, for a sign that the laughter-moving and +the worshipful may be in alliance: I know not how far comic, or how +much assisted in seeming so by the unexpectedness and the relief of +its appearance: at least they are popular, they are said to win the +ear. Laughter is open to perversion, like other good things; the +scornful and the brutal sorts are not unknown to us; but the laughter +directed by the Comic spirit is a harmless wine, conducing to sobriety +in the degree that it enlivens. It enters you like fresh air into +a study; as when one of the sudden contrasts of the comic idea floods +the brain like reassuring daylight. You are cognizant of the true +kind by feeling that you take it in, savour it, and have what flowers +live on, natural air for food. That which you give out—the +joyful roar—is not the better part; let that go to good fellowship +and the benefit of the lungs. Aristophanes promises his auditors +that if they will retain the ideas of the comic poet carefully, as they +keep dried fruits in boxes, their garments shall smell odoriferous of +wisdom throughout the year. The boast will not be thought an empty +one by those who have choice friends that have stocked themselves according +to his directions. Such treasuries of sparkling laughter are wells +in our desert. Sensitiveness to the comic laugh is a step in civilization. +To shrink from being an object of it is a step in cultivation. +We know the degree of refinement in men by the matter they will laugh +at, and the ring of the laugh; but we know likewise that the larger +natures are distinguished by the great breadth of their power of laughter, +and no one really loving Molière is refined by that love to despise +or be dense to Aristophanes, though it may be that the lover of Aristophanes +will not have risen to the height of Molière. Embrace them +both, and you have the whole scale of laughter in your breast. +Nothing in the world surpasses in stormy fun the scene in The Frogs, +when Bacchus and Xanthias receive their thrashings from the hands of +businesslike Œacus, to discover which is the divinity of the two, +by his imperviousness to the mortal condition of pain, and each, under +the obligation of not crying out, makes believe that his horrible bellow—the +god’s <i>iou iou</i> being the lustier—means only the stopping +of a sneeze, or horseman sighted, or the prelude to an invocation to +some deity: and the slave contrives that the god shall get the bigger +lot of blows. Passages of Rabelais, one or two in Don Quixote, +and the Supper in the Manner of the Ancients, in Peregrine Pickle, are +of a similar cataract of laughter. But it is not illuminating; +it is not the laughter of the mind. Molière’s laughter, +in his purest comedies, is ethereal, as light to our nature, as colour +to our thoughts. The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have no audible +laughter; but the characters are steeped in the comic spirit. +They quicken the mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; +and the mind accepts them because they are clear interpretations of +certain chapters of the Book lying open before us all. Between +these two stand Shakespeare and Cervantes, with the richer laugh of +heart and mind in one; with much of the Aristophanic robustness, something +of Molière’s delicacy.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The laughter heard in circles not pervaded by the Comic idea, will +sound harsh and soulless, like versified prose, if you step into them +with a sense of the distinction. You will fancy you have changed +your habitation to a planet remoter from the sun. You may be among +powerful brains too. You will not find poets—or but a stray +one, over-worshipped. You will find learned men undoubtedly, professors, +reputed philosophers, and illustrious dilettanti. They have in +them, perhaps, every element composing light, except the Comic. +They read verse, they discourse of art; but their eminent faculties +are not under that vigilant sense of a collective supervision, spiritual +and present, which we have taken note of. They build a temple +of arrogance; they speak much in the voice of oracles; their hilarity, +if it does not dip in grossness, is usually a form of pugnacity.</p> +<p>Insufficiency of sight in the eye looking outward has deprived them +of the eye that should look inward. They have never weighed themselves +in the delicate balance of the Comic idea so as to obtain a suspicion +of the rights and dues of the world; and they have, in consequence, +an irritable personality. A very learned English professor crushed +an argument in a political discussion, by asking his adversary angrily: +‘Are you aware, sir, that I am a philologer?’</p> +<p>The practice of polite society will help in training them, and the +professor on a sofa with beautiful ladies on each side of him, may become +their pupil and a scholar in manners without knowing it: he is at least +a fair and pleasing spectacle to the Comic Muse. But the society +named polite is volatile in its adorations, and to-morrow will be petting +a bronzed soldier, or a black African, or a prince, or a spiritualist: +ideas cannot take root in its ever-shifting soil. It is besides +addicted in self-defence to gabble exclusively of the affairs of its +rapidly revolving world, as children on a whirligoround bestow their +attention on the wooden horse or cradle ahead of them, to escape from +giddiness and preserve a notion of identity. The professor is +better out of a circle that often confounds by lionizing, sometimes +annoys by abandoning, and always confuses. The school that teaches +gently what peril there is lest a cultivated head should still be coxcomb’s, +and the collisions which may befall high-soaring minds, empty or full, +is more to be recommended than the sphere of incessant motion supplying +it with material.</p> +<p>Lands where the Comic spirit is obscure overhead are rank with raw +crops of matter. The traveller accustomed to smooth highways and +people not covered with burrs and prickles is amazed, amid so much that +is fair and cherishable, to come upon such curious barbarism. +An Englishman paid a visit of admiration to a professor in the Land +of Culture, and was introduced by him to another distinguished professor, +to whom he took so cordially as to walk out with him alone one afternoon. +The first professor, an erudite entirely worthy of the sentiment of +scholarly esteem prompting the visit, behaved (if we exclude the dagger) +with the vindictive jealousy of an injured Spanish beauty. After +a short prelude of gloom and obscure explosions, he discharged upon +his faithless admirer the bolts of passionate logic familiar to the +ears of flighty caballeros:—‘Either I am a fit object of +your admiration, or I am not. Of these things one—either +you are competent to judge, in which case I stand condemned by you; +or you are incompetent, and therefore impertinent, and you may betake +yourself to your country again, hypocrite!’ The admirer +was for persuading the wounded scholar that it is given to us to be +able to admire two professors at a time. He was driven forth.</p> +<p>Perhaps this might have occurred in any country, and a comedy of +The Pedant, discovering the greedy humanity within the dusty scholar, +would not bring it home to one in particular. I am mindful that +it was in Germany, when I observe that the Germans have gone through +no comic training to warn them of the sly, wise emanation eyeing them +from aloft, nor much of satirical. Heinrich Heine has not been +enough to cause them to smart and meditate. Nationally, as well +as individually, when they are excited they are in danger of the grotesque, +as when, for instance, they decline to listen to evidence, and raise +a national outcry because one of German blood has been convicted of +crime in a foreign country. They are acute critics, yet they still +wield clubs in controversy. Compare them in this respect with +the people schooled in La Bruyère, La Fontaine, Molière; +with the people who have the figures of a Trissotin and a Vadius before +them for a comic warning of the personal vanities of the caressed professor. +It is more than difference of race. It is the difference of traditions, +temper, and style, which comes of schooling.</p> +<p>The French controversialist is a polished swordsman, to be dreaded +in his graces and courtesies. The German is Orson, or the mob, +or a marching army, in defence of a good case or a bad—a big or +a little. His irony is a missile of terrific tonnage: sarcasm +he emits like a blast from a dragon’s mouth. He must and +will be Titan. He stamps his foe underfoot, and is astonished +that the creature is not dead, but stinging; for, in truth, the Titan +is contending, by comparison, with a god.</p> +<p>When the Germans lie on their arms, looking across the Alsatian frontier +at the crowds of Frenchmen rushing to applaud L’ami Fritz at the +Théâtre Français, looking and considering the meaning +of that applause, which is grimly comic in its political response to +the domestic moral of the play—when the Germans watch and are +silent, their force of character tells. They are kings in music, +we may say princes in poetry, good speculators in philosophy, and our +leaders in scholarship. That so gifted a race, possessed moreover +of the stern good sense which collects the waters of laughter to make +the wells, should show at a disadvantage, I hold for a proof, instructive +to us, that the discipline of the comic spirit is needful to their growth. +We see what they can reach to in that great figure of modern manhood, +Goethe. They are a growing people; they are conversable as well; +and when their men, as in France, and at intervals at Berlin tea-tables, +consent to talk on equal terms with their women, and to listen to them, +their growth will be accelerated and be shapelier. Comedy, or +in any form the Comic spirit, will then come to them to cut some figures +out of the block, show them the mirror, enliven and irradiate the social +intelligence.</p> +<p>Modern French comedy is commendable for the directness of the study +of actual life, as far as that, which is but the early step in such +a scholarship, can be of service in composing and colouring the picture. +A consequence of this crude, though well-meant, realism is the collision +of the writers in their scenes and incidents, and in their characters. +The Muse of most of them is an <i>Aventurière</i>. She +is clever, and a certain diversion exists in the united scheme for confounding +her. The object of this person is to reinstate herself in the +decorous world; and either, having accomplished this purpose through +deceit, she has a <i>nostalgie de la boue</i>, that eventually casts +her back into it, or she is exposed in her course of deception when +she is about to gain her end. A very good, innocent young man +is her victim, or a very astute, goodish young man obstructs her path. +This latter is enabled to be the champion of the decorous world by knowing +the indecorous well. He has assisted in the progress of Aventurières +downward; he will not help them to ascend. The world is with him; +and certainly it is not much of an ascension they aspire to; but what +sort of a figure is he? The triumph of a candid realism is to +show him no hero. You are to admire him (for it must be supposed +that realism pretends to waken some admiration) as a credibly living +young man; no better, only a little firmer and shrewder, than the rest. +If, however, you think at all, after the curtain has fallen, you are +likely to think that the Aventurières have a case to plead against +him. True, and the author has not said anything to the contrary; +he has but painted from the life; he leaves his audience to the reflections +of unphilosophic minds upon life, from the specimen he has presented +in the bright and narrow circle of a spy-glass.</p> +<p>I do not know that the fly in amber is of any particular use, but +the Comic idea enclosed in a comedy makes it more generally perceptible +and portable, and that is an advantage. There is a benefit to +men in taking the lessons of Comedy in congregations, for it enlivens +the wits; and to writers it is beneficial, for they must have a clear +scheme, and even if they have no idea to present, they must prove that +they have made the public sit to them before the sitting to see the +picture. And writing for the stage would be a corrective of a +too-incrusted scholarly style, into which some great ones fall at times. +It keeps minor writers to a definite plan, and to English. Many +of them now swelling a plethoric market, in the composition of novels, +in pun-manufactories and in journalism; attached to the machinery forcing +perishable matter on a public that swallows voraciously and groans; +might, with encouragement, be attending to the study of art in literature. +Our critics appear to be fascinated by the quaintness of our public, +as the world is when our beast-garden has a new importation of magnitude, +and the creatures appetite is reverently consulted. They stipulate +for a writer’s popularity before they will do much more than take +the position of umpires to record his failure or success. Now +the pig supplies the most popular of dishes, but it is not accounted +the most honoured of animals, unless it be by the cottager. Our +public might surely be led to try other, perhaps finer, meat. +It has good taste in song. It might be taught as justly, on the +whole, and the sooner when the cottager’s view of the feast shall +cease to be the humble one of our literary critics, to extend this capacity +for delicate choosing in the direction of the matter arousing laughter.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> A lecture +delivered at the London Institution, February 1st, 1877.</p> +<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> Realism +in the writing is carried to such a pitch in THE OLD BACHELOR, that +husband and wife use imbecile connubial epithets to one another.</p> +<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a> Tallemant +des Réaux, in his rough portrait of the Duke, shows the foundation +of the character of Alceste.</p> +<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> See Tom +Jones, book viii. chapter I, for Fielding’s opinion of our Comedy. +But he puts it simply; not as an exercise in the quasi-philosophical +bathetic.</p> +<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> Femmes +Savantes:</p> +<p>BÉLISE: Veux-tu toute la vie offenser la grammaire?</p> +<p>MARTINE: Qui parle d’offenser grand’mère ni grand-père?’</p> +<p>The pun is delivered in all sincerity, from the mouth of a rustic.</p> +<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a> Maskwell +seems to have been carved on the model of Iago, as by the hand of an +enterprising urchin. He apostrophizes his ‘invention’ +repeatedly. ‘Thanks, my invention.’ He hits +on an invention, to say: ‘Was it my brain or Providence? no matter +which.’ It is no matter which, but it was not his brain.</p> +<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7">{7}</a> Imaginary +Conversations: Alfieri and the Jew Salomon.</p> +<p><a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8">{8}</a> Terence +did not please the rough old conservative Romans; they liked Plautus +better, and the recurring mention of the <i>vetus poeta</i> in his prologues, +who plagued him with the crusty critical view of his productions, has +in the end a comic effect on the reader.</p> +<p><a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9">{9}</a> The exclamation +of Lady Booby, when Joseph defends himself: ‘<i>Your virtue</i>! +I shall never survive it!’ etc., is another instance.—Joseph +Andrews. Also that of Miss Mathews in her narrative to Booth: +‘But such are the friendships of women.’—Amelia.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY ON COMEDY***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1219-h.htm or 1219-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/2/1/1219 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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