THE COMIC ELEMENT IN SITUATIONS AND THE COMIC ELEMENT IN WORDS
I
We have studied the comic element in forms, in attitudes, and in
movements generally; now let us look for it in actions and in
situations. We encounter, indeed, this kind of comic readily enough in
everyday life. It is not here, however, that it best lends itself to
analysis. Assuming that the stage is both a magnified and a simplified
view of life, we shall find that comedy is capable of furnishing us
with more information than real life on this particular part of our
subject. Perhaps we ought even to carry simplification still farther,
and, going back to our earliest recollections, try to discover, in the
games that amused us as children, the first faint traces of the
combinations that make us laugh as grown-up persons. We are too apt to
speak of our feelings of pleasure and of pain as though full grown at
birth, as though each one of them had not a history of its own. Above
all, we are too apt to ignore the childish element, so to speak, latent
in most of our joyful emotions. And yet, how many of our present
pleasures, were we to examine them closely, would shrink into nothing
more than memories of past ones! What would there be left of many of
our emotions were we to reduce them to the exact quantum of pure
feeling they contain, by subtracting from them all that is merely
reminiscence? Indeed, it seems possible that, after a certain age, we
become impervious to all fresh or novel forms of joy, and the sweetest
pleasures of the middle-aged man are perhaps nothing more than a
revival of the sensations of childhood, a balmy zephyr wafted in
fainter and fainter breaths by a past that is ever receding. In any
case, whatever reply we give to this broad question, one thing is
certain: there can be no break in continuity between the child's
delight in games and that of the grown-up person. Now, comedy is a
game, a game that imitates life. And since, in the games of the child
when working its dolls and puppets, many of the movements are produced
by strings, ought we not to find those same strings, somewhat frayed by
wear, reappearing as the threads that knot together the situations in a
comedy? Let us, then, start with the games of a child, and follow the
imperceptible process by which, as he grows himself, he makes his
puppets grow, inspires them with life, and finally brings them to an
ambiguous state in which, without ceasing to be puppets, they have yet
become human beings. We thus obtain characters of a comedy type. And
upon them we can test the truth of the law of which all our preceding
analyses gave an inkling, a law in accordance with which we will define
all broadly comic situations in general. ANY ARRANGEMENT OF ACTS AND
EVENTS IS COMIC WHICH GIVES US, IN A SINGLE COMBINATION, THE ILLUSION
OF LIFE AND THE DISTINCT IMPRESSION OF A MECHANICAL ARRANGEMENT.
1. THE JACK-IN-THE-BOX.--As children we have all played with the little
man who springs out of his box. You squeeze him flat, he jumps up
again. Push him lower, and he shoots up still higher. Crush him down
beneath the lid, and often he will send everything flying. It is hard
to tell whether or no the toy itself is very ancient, but the kind of
amusement it affords belongs to all time. It is a struggle between two
stubborn elements, one of which, being simply mechanical, generally
ends by giving in to the other, which treats it as a plaything. A cat
playing with a mouse, which from time to time she releases like a
spring, only to pull it up short with a stroke of her paw, indulges in
the same kind of amusement.
We will now pass on to the theatre, beginning with a Punch and Judy
show. No sooner does the policeman put in an appearance on the stage
than, naturally enough, he receives a blow which fells him. He springs
to his feet, a second blow lays him flat. A repetition of the offence
is followed by a repetition of the punishment. Up and down the
constable flops and hops with the uniform rhythm of the bending and
release of a spring, whilst the spectators laugh louder and louder.
Now, let us think of a spring that is rather of a moral type, an idea
that is first expressed, then repressed, and then expressed again; a
stream of words that bursts forth, is checked, and keeps on starting
afresh. Once more we have the vision of one stubborn force,
counteracted by another, equally pertinacious. This vision, however,
will have discarded a portion of its materiality. No longer is it Punch
and Judy that we are watching, but rather a real comedy.
Many a comic scene may indeed be referred to this simple type. For
instance, in the scene of the Mariage force between Sganarelle and
Pancrace, the entire vis comica lies in the conflict set up between the
idea of Sganarelle, who wishes to make the philosopher listen to him,
and the obstinacy of the philosopher, a regular talking-machine working
automatically. As the scene progresses, the image of the
Jack-in-the-box becomes more apparent, so that at last the characters
themselves adopt its movements,--Sganarelle pushing Pancrace, each time
he shows himself, back into the wings, Pancrace returning to the stage
after each repulse to continue his patter. And when Sganarelle finally
drives Pancrace back and shuts him up inside the house--inside the box,
one is tempted to say--a window suddenly flies open, and the head of
the philosopher again appears as though it had burst open the lid of a
box.
The same by-play occurs in the Malade Imaginaire. Through the mouth of
Monsieur Purgon the outraged medical profession pours out its vials of
wrath upon Argan, threatening him with every disease that flesh is heir
to. And every time Argan rises from his seat, as though to silence
Purgon, the latter disappears for a moment, being, as it were, thrust
back into the wings; then, as though Impelled by a spring, he rebounds
on to the stage with a fresh curse on his lips. The self-same
exclamation: "Monsieur Purgon!" recurs at regular beats, and, as it
were, marks the TEMPO of this little scene.
Let us scrutinise more closely the image of the spring which is bent,
released, and bent again. Let us disentangle its central element, and
we shall hit upon one of the usual processes of classic
comedy,--REPETITION.
Why is it there is something comic in the repetition of a word on the
stage? No theory of the ludicrous seems to offer a satisfactory answer
to this very simple question. Nor can an answer be found so long as we
look for the explanation of an amusing word or phrase in the phrase or
word itself, apart from all it suggests to us. Nowhere will the usual
method prove to be so inadequate as here. With the exception, however,
of a few special instances to which we shall recur later, the
repetition of a word is never laughable in itself. It makes us laugh
only because it symbolises a special play of moral elements, this play
itself being the symbol of an altogether material diversion. It is the
diversion of the cat with the mouse, the diversion of the child pushing
back the Jack-in-the-box, time after time, to the bottom of his
box,--but in a refined and spiritualised form, transferred to the realm
of feelings and ideas. Let us then state the law which, we think,
defines the main comic varieties of word-repetition on the stage: IN A
COMIC REPETITION OF WORDS WE GENERALLY FIND TWO TERMS: A REPRESSED
FEELING WHICH GOES OFF LIKE A SPRING, AND AN IDEA THAT DELIGHTS IN
REPRESSING THE FEELING ANEW.
When Dorine is telling Orgon of his wife's illness, and the latter
continually interrupts him with inquiries as to the health of Tartuffe,
the question: "Et tartuffe?" repeated every few moments, affords us the
distinct sensation of a spring being released. This spring Dorine
delights in pushing back, each time she resumes her account of Elmire's
illness. And when Scapin informs old Geronte that his son has been
taken prisoner on the famous galley, and that a ransom must be paid
without delay, he is playing with the avarice of Geronte exactly as
Dorine does with the infatuation of Orgon. The old man's avarice is no
sooner repressed than up it springs again automatically, and it is this
automatism that Moliere tries to indicate by the mechanical repetition
of a sentence expressing regret at the money that would have to be
forthcoming: "What the deuce did he want in that galley?" The same
criticism is applicable to the scene in which Valere points out to
Harpagon the wrong he would be doing in marrying his daughter to a man
she did not love. "No dowry wanted!" interrupts the miserly Harpagon
every few moments. Behind this exclamation, which recurs automatically,
we faintly discern a complete repeating-machine set going by a fixed
idea.
At times this mechanism is less easy to detect, and here we encounter a
fresh difficulty in the theory of the comic. Sometimes the whole
interest of a scene lies in one character playing a double part, the
intervening speaker acting as a mere prism, so to speak, through which
the dual personality is developed. We run the risk, then, of going
astray if we look for the secret of the effect in what we see and
hear,--in the external scene played by the characters,--and not in the
altogether inner comedy of which this scene is no more than the outer
refraction. For instance, when Alceste stubbornly repeats the words, "I
don't say that!" on Oronte asking him if he thinks his poetry bad, the
repetition is laughable, though evidently Oronte is not now playing
with Alceste at the game we have just described. We must be careful,
however, for, in reality, we have two men in Alceste: on the one hand,
the "misanthropist" who has vowed henceforth to call a spade a spade,
and on the other the gentleman who cannot unlearn, in a trice, the
usual forms of politeness, or even, it may be, just the honest fellow
who, when called upon to put his words into practice, shrinks from
wounding another's self-esteem or hurting his feelings. Accordingly,
the real scene is not between Alceste and Oronte, it is between Alceste
and himself. The one Alceste would fain blurt out the truth, and the
other stops his mouth just as he is on the point of telling everything.
Each "I don't say that!" reveals a growing effort to repress something
that strives and struggles to get out. And so the tone in which the
phrase is uttered gets more and more violent, Alceste becoming more and
more angry--not with Oronte, as he thinks--but with himself. The
tension of the spring is continually being renewed and reinforced until
it at last goes off with a bang. Here, as elsewhere, we have the same
identical mechanism of repetition.
For a man to make a resolution never henceforth to say what he does not
think, even though he "openly defy the whole human race," is not
necessarily laughable; it is only a phase of life at its highest and
best. For another man, through amiability, selfishness, or disdain, to
prefer to flatter people is only another phase of life; there is
nothing in it to make us laugh. You may even combine these two men into
one, and arrange that the individual waver between offensive frankness
and delusive politeness, this duel between two opposing feelings will
not even then be comic, rather it will appear the essence of
seriousness if these two feelings through their very distinctness
complete each other, develop side by side, and make up between them a
composite mental condition, adopting, in short, a modus vivendi which
merely gives us the complex impression of life. But imagine these two
feelings as INELASTIC and unvarying elements in a really living man,
make him oscillate from one to the other; above all, arrange that this
oscillation becomes entirely mechanical by adopting the well-known form
of some habitual, simple, childish contrivance: then you will get the
image we have so far found in all laughable objects, SOMETHING
MECHANICAL IN SOMETHING LIVING; in fact, something comic.
We have dwelt on this first image, the Jack-in-the-box, sufficiently to
show how comic fancy gradually converts a material mechanism into a
moral one. Now we will consider one or two other games, confining
ourselves to their most striking aspects.
2. THE DANCING-JACK.--There are innumerable comedies in which one of
the characters thinks he is speaking and acting freely, and,
consequently, retains all the essentials of life, whereas, viewed from
a certain standpoint, he appears as a mere toy in the hands of another
who is playing with him. The transition is easily made, from the
dancing-jack which a child works with a string, to Geronte and Argante
manipulated by Scapin. Listen to Scapin himself: "The MACHINE is all
there"; and again: "Providence has brought them into my net," etc.
Instinctively, and because one would rather be a cheat than be cheated,
in imagination at all events, the spectator sides with the knaves; and
for the rest of the time, like a child who has persuaded his playmate
to lend him his doll, he takes hold of the strings himself and makes
the marionette come and go on the stage as he pleases. But this latter
condition is not indispensable; we can remain outside the pale of what
is taking place if only we retain the distinct impression of a
mechanical arrangement. This is what happens whenever one of the
characters vacillates between two contrary opinions, each in turn
appealing to him, as when Panurge asks Tom, Dick, and Harry whether or
no he ought to get married. Note that, in such a case, a comic author
is always careful to PERSONIFY the two opposing decisions. For, if
there is no spectator, there must at all events be actors to hold the
strings.
All that is serious in life comes from our freedom. The feelings we
have matured, the passions we have brooded over, the actions we have
weighed, decided upon, and carried through, in short, all that comes
from us and is our very own, these are the things that give life its
ofttimes dramatic and generally grave aspect. What, then, is requisite
to transform all this into a comedy? Merely to fancy that our seeming,
freedom conceals the strings of a dancing-Jack, and that we are, as the
poet says,
... humble marionettes The wires of which are pulled by Fate.
[Footnote: ... d'humbles marionnettes Dont le fil est aux mains de la
Necessite. SULLY-PRUDHOMME.]
So there is not a real, a serious, or even a dramatic scene that fancy
cannot render comic by simply calling forth this image. Nor is there a
game for which a wider field lies open.
3. THE SNOW-BALL.--The farther we proceed in this investigation into
the methods of comedy, the more clearly we see the part played by
childhood's memories. These memories refer, perhaps, less to any
special game than to the mechanical device of which that game is a
particular instance. The same general device, moreover, may be met with
in widely different games, just as the same operatic air is found in
many different arrangements and variations. What is here of importance
and is retained in the mind, what passes by imperceptible stages from
the games of a child to those of a man, is the mental diagram, the
skeleton outline of the combination, or, if you like, the abstract
formula of which these games are particular illustrations. Take, for
instance, the rolling snow-ball, which increases in size as it moves
along. We might just as well think of toy soldiers standing behind one
another. Push the first and it tumbles down on the second, this latter
knocks down the third, and the state of things goes from bad to worse
until they all lie prone on the floor. Or again, take a house of cards
that has been built up with infinite care: the first you touch seems
uncertain whether to move or not, its tottering neighbour comes to a
quicker decision, and the work of destruction, gathering momentum as it
goes on, rushes headlong to the final collapse.
These instances are all different, but they suggest the same abstract
vision, that of an effect which grows by arithmetical progression, so
that the cause, insignificant at the outset, culminates by a necessary
evolution in a result as important as it is unexpected. Now let us open
a children's picture-book; we shall find this arrangement already on
the high road to becoming comic. Here, for instance--in one of the
comic chap-books picked up by chance--we have a caller rushing
violently into a drawing-room; he knocks against a lady, who upsets her
cup of tea over an old gentleman, who slips against a glass window
which falls in the street on to the head of a constable, who sets the
whole police force agog, etc. The same arrangement reappears in many a
picture intended for grownup persons. In the "stories without words"
sketched by humorous artists we are often shown an object which moves
from place to place, and persons who are closely connected with it, so
that through a series of scenes a change in the position of the object
mechanically brings about increasingly serious changes in the situation
of the persons. Let us now turn to comedy. Many a droll scene, many a
comedy even, may be referred to this simple type. Read the speech of
Chicanneau in the Plaideurs: here we find lawsuits within lawsuits, and
the mechanism works faster and faster--Racine produces in us this
feeling of increasing acceleration by crowding his law terms ever
closer together--until the lawsuit over a truss of hay costs the
plaintiff the best part of his fortune. And again the same arrangement
occurs in certain scenes of Don Quixote; for instance, in the inn
scene, where, by an extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, the
mule-driver strikes Sancho, who belabours Maritornes, upon whom the
innkeeper falls, etc. Finally, let us pass to the light comedy of
to-day. Need we call to mind all the forms in which this same
combination appears? There is one that is employed rather frequently.
For instance, a certain thing, say a letter, happens to be of supreme
importance to a certain person and must be recovered at all costs. This
thing, which always vanishes just when you think you have caught it,
pervades the entire play, "rolling up" increasingly serious and
unexpected incidents as it proceeds. All this is far more like a
child's game than appears at first blush. Once more the effect produced
is that of the snowball.
It is the characteristic of a mechanical combination to be generally
REVERSIBLE. A child is delighted when he sees the ball in a game of
ninepins knocking down everything in its way and spreading havoc in all
directions; he laughs louder than ever when the ball returns to its
starting-point after twists and turns and waverings of every kind. In
other words, the mechanism just described is laughable even when
rectilinear, it is much more so on becoming circular and when every
effort the player makes, by a fatal interaction of cause and effect,
merely results in bringing it back to the same spot. Now, a
considerable number of light comedies revolve round this idea. An
Italian straw hat has been eaten up by a horse. [Footnote: Un Chapeau
de paille d'Italie (Labiche).] There is only one other hat like it in
the whole of Paris; it MUST be secured regardless of cost. This hat,
which always slips away at the moment its capture seems inevitable,
keeps the principal character on the run, and through him all the
others who hang, so to say, on to his coat tails, like a magnet which,
by a successive series of attractions, draws along in its train the
grains of iron filings that hang on to each other. And when at last,
after all sorts of difficulties, the goal seems in sight, it is found
that the hat so ardently sought is precisely the one that has been
eaten. The same voyage of discovery is depicted in another equally
well-known comedy of Labiche. [Footnote: La Cagnotte.] The curtain
rises on an old bachelor and an old maid, acquaintances of long
standing, at the moment of enjoying their daily rubber. Each of them,
unknown to the other, has applied to the same matrimonial agency.
Through innumerable difficulties, one mishap following on the heels of
another, they hurry along, side by side, right through the play, to the
interview which brings them back, purely and simply, into each other's
presence. We have the same circular effect, the same return to the
starting-point, in a more recent play. [Footnote: Les Surprises du
divorce.] A henpecked husband imagines he has escaped by divorce from
the clutches of his wife and his mother-in-law. He marries again, when,
lo and behold, the double combination of marriage and divorce brings
back to him his former wife in the aggravated form of a second
mother-in-law!
When we think how intense and how common is this type of the comic, we
understand why it has fascinated the imagination of certain
philosophers. To cover a good deal of ground only to come back
unwittingly to the starting-point, is to make a great effort for a
result that is nil. So we might be tempted to define the comic in this
latter fashion. And such, indeed, seems to be the idea of Herbert
Spencer: according to him, laughter is the indication of an effort
which suddenly encounters a void. Kant had already said something of
the kind: "Laughter is the result of an expectation, which, of a
sudden, ends in nothing." No doubt these definitions would apply to the
last few examples given, although, even then, the formula needs the
addition of sundry limitations, for we often make an ineffectual effort
which is in no way provocative of laughter. While, however, the last
few examples are illustrations of a great cause resulting in a small
effect, we quoted others, immediately before, which might be defined
inversely as a great effect springing from a small cause. The truth is,
this second definition has scarcely more validity than the first. Lack
of proportion between cause and effect, whether appearing in one or in
the other, is never the direct source of laughter. What we do laugh at
is something that this lack of proportion may in certain cases
disclose, namely, a particular mechanical arrangement which it reveals
to us, as through a glass, at the back of the series of effects and
causes. Disregard this arrangement, and you let go the only clue
capable of guiding you through the labyrinth of the comic. Any
hypothesis you otherwise would select, while possibly applicable to a
few carefully chosen cases, is liable at any moment to be met and
overthrown by the first unsuitable instance that comes along.
But why is it we laugh at this mechanical arrangement? It is doubtless
strange that the history of a person or of a group should sometimes
appear like a game worked by strings, or gearings, or springs; but from
what source does the special character of this strangeness arise? What
is it that makes it laughable? To this question, which we have already
propounded in various forms, our answer must always be the same. The
rigid mechanism which we occasionally detect, as a foreign body, in the
living continuity of human affairs is of peculiar interest to us as
being a kind of ABSENTMINDEDNESS on the part of life. Were events
unceasingly mindful of their own course, there would be no
coincidences, no conjunctures and no circular series; everything would
evolve and progress continuously. And were all men always attentive to
life, were we constantly keeping in touch with others as well as with
ourselves, nothing within us would ever appear as due to the working of
strings or springs. The comic is that side of a person which reveals
his likeness to a thing, that aspect of human events which, through its
peculiar inelasticity, conveys the impression of pure mechanism, of
automatism, of movement without life. Consequently it expresses an
individual or collective imperfection which calls for an immediate
corrective. This corrective is laughter, a social gesture that singles
out and represses a special kind of absentmindedness in men and in
events.
But this in turn tempts us to make further investigations. So far, we
have spent our time in rediscovering, in the diversions of the grownup
man, those mechanical combinations which amused him as a child. Our
methods, in fact, have been entirely empirical. Let us now attempt to
frame a full and methodical theory, by seeking, as it were, at the
fountainhead, the changeless and simple archetypes of the manifold and
transient practices of the comic stage. Comedy, we said, combines
events so as to introduce mechanism into the outer forms of life. Let
us now ascertain in what essential characteristics life, when viewed
from without, seems to contrast with mere mechanism. We shall only
have, then, to turn to the opposite characteristics, in order to
discover the abstract formula, this time a general and complete one,
for every real and possible method of comedy.
Life presents itself to us as evolution in time and complexity in
space. Regarded in time, it is the continuous evolution of a being ever
growing older; it never goes backwards and never repeats anything.
Considered in space, it exhibits certain coexisting elements so closely
interdependent, so exclusively made for one another, that not one of
them could, at the same time, belong to two different organisms: each
living being is a closed system of phenomena, incapable of interfering
with other systems. A continual change of aspect, the irreversibility
of the order of phenomena, the perfect individuality of a perfectly
self-contained series: such, then, are the outward
characteristics--whether real or apparent is of little moment--which
distinguish the living from the merely mechanical. Let us take the
counterpart of each of these: we shall obtain three processes which
might be called REPETITION, INVERSION, and RECIPROCAL INTERFERENCE OF
SERIES. Now, it is easy to see that these are also the methods of light
comedy, and that no others are possible.
As a matter of fact, we could discover them, as ingredients of varying
importance, in the composition of all the scenes we have just been
considering, and, a fortiori, in the children's games, the mechanism of
which they reproduce. The requisite analysis would, however, delay us
too long, and it is more profitable to study them in their purity by
taking fresh examples. Nothing could be easier, for it is in their pure
state that they are found both in classic comedy and in contemporary
plays.
1. REPETITION.-Our present problem no longer deals, like the preceding
one, with a word or a sentence repeated by an individual, but rather
with a situation, that is, a combination of circumstances, which recurs
several times in its original form and thus contrasts with the changing
stream of life. Everyday experience supplies us with this type of the
comic, though only in a rudimentary state. Thus, you meet a friend in
the street whom you have not seen for an age; there is nothing comic in
the situation. If, however, you meet, him again the same day, and then
a third and a fourth time, you may laugh at the "coincidence." Now,
picture to yourself a series of imaginary events which affords a
tolerably fair illusion of life, and within this ever-moving series
imagine one and the same scene reproduced either by the same characters
or by different ones: again you will have a coincidence, though a far
more extraordinary one.
Such are the repetitions produced on the stage. They are the more
laughable in proportion as the scene repeated is more complex and more
naturally introduced--two conditions which seem mutually exclusive, and
which the play-writer must be clever enough to reconcile.
Contemporary light comedy employs this method in every shape and form.
One of the best-known examples consists in bringing a group of
characters, act after act, into the most varied surroundings, so as to
reproduce, under ever fresh circumstances, one and the same series of
incidents or accidents more or less symmetrically identical.
In several of Moliere's plays we find one and the same arrangement of
events repeated right through the comedy from beginning to end. Thus,
the Ecole des femmes does nothing more than reproduce and repeat a
single incident in three tempi: first tempo, Horace tells Arnolphe of
the plan he has devised to deceive Agnes's guardian, who turns out to
be Arnolphe himself; second tempo, Arnolphe thinks he has checkmated
the move; third tempo, Agnes contrives that Horace gets all the benefit
of Arnolphe's precautionary measures. There is the same symmetrical
repetition in the Ecole des marts, in L'Etourdi, and above all in
George Dandin, where the same effect in three tempi is again met with:
first tempo, George Dandin discovers that his wife is unfaithful;
second tempo, he summons his father--and mother-in-law to his
assistance; third tempo, it is George Dandin himself, after all, who
has to apologise.
At times the same scene is reproduced with groups of different
characters. Then it not infrequently happens that the first group
consists of masters and the second of servants. The latter repeat in
another key a scene already played by the former, though the rendering
is naturally less refined. A part of the Depit amoureux is constructed
on this plan, as is also Amphitryon. In an amusing little comedy of
Benedix, Der Eigensinn, the order is inverted: we have the masters
reproducing a scene of stubbornness in which their servants have set
the example.
But, quite irrespective of the characters who serve as pegs for the
arrangement of symmetrical situations, there seems to be a wide gulf
between classic comedy and the theatre of to-day. Both aim at
introducing a certain mathematical order into events, while none the
less maintaining their aspect of likelihood, that is to say, of life.
But the means they employ are different. The majority of light comedies
of our day seek to mesmerise directly the mind of the spectator. For,
however extraordinary the coincidence, it becomes acceptable from the
very fact that it is accepted; and we do accept it, if we have been
gradually prepared for its reception. Such is often the procedure
adopted by contemporary authors. In Moliere's plays, on the contrary,
it is the moods of the persons on the stage, not of the audience, that
make repetition seem natural. Each of the characters represents a
certain force applied in a certain direction, and it is because these
forces, constant in direction, necessarily combine together in the same
way, that the same situation is reproduced. Thus interpreted, the
comedy of situation is akin to the comedy of character. It deserves to
be called classic, if classic art is indeed that which does not claim
to derive from the effect more than it has put into the cause.
2. Inversion.--This second method has so much analogy with the first
that we will merely define it without insisting on illustrations.
Picture to yourself certain characters in a certain situation: if you
reverse the situation and invert the roles, you obtain a comic scene.
The double rescue scene in Le Voyage de M. Perrichon belongs to this
class. [Footnote: Labiche, "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon."] There is no
necessity, however, for both the identical scenes to be played before
us. We may be shown only one, provided the other is really in our
minds. Thus, we laugh at the prisoner at the bar lecturing the
magistrate; at a child presuming to teach its parents; in a word, at
everything that comes under the heading of "topsyturvydom." Not
infrequently comedy sets before us a character who lays a trap in which
he is the first to be caught. The plot of the villain who is the victim
of his own villainy, or the cheat cheated, forms the stock-in-trade of
a good many plays. We find this even in primitive farce. Lawyer
Pathelin tells his client of a trick to outwit the magistrate; the
client employs the self-same trick to avoid paying the lawyer. A
termagant of a wife insists upon her husband doing all the housework;
she has put down each separate item on a "rota." Now let her fall into
a copper, her husband will refuse to drag her out, for "that is not
down on his 'rota.'" In modern literature we meet with hundreds of
variations on the theme of the robber robbed. In every case the root
idea involves an inversion of roles, and a situation which recoils on
the head of its author.
Here we apparently find the confirmation of a law, some illustrations
of which we have already pointed out. When a comic scene has been
reproduced a number of times, it reaches the stage of being a classical
type or model. It becomes amusing in itself, quite apart from the
causes which render it amusing. Henceforth, new scenes, which are not
comic de jure, may become amusing de facto, on account of their partial
resemblance to this model. They call up in our mind a more or less
confused image which we know to be comical. They range themselves in a
category representing an officially recognised type of the comic. The
scene of the "robber robbed" belongs to this class. It casts over a
host of other scenes a reflection of the comic element it contains. In
the end it renders comic any mishap that befalls one through one's own
fault, no matter what the fault or mishap may be,--nay, an allusion to
this mishap, a single word that recalls it, is sufficient. There would
be nothing amusing in the saying, "It serves you right, George Dandin,"
were it not for the comic overtones that take up and re-echo it.
3. We have dwelt at considerable length on repetition and inversion; we
now come to the reciprocal interference [Footnote: The word
"interference" has here the meaning given to it in Optics, where it
indicates the partial superposition and neutralisation, by each other,
of two series of light-waves.] of series. This is a comic effect, the
precise formula of which is very difficult to disentangle, by reason of
the extraordinary variety of forms in which it appears on the stage.
Perhaps it might be defined as follows: A situation is invariably comic
when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of
events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different
meanings at the same time.
You will at once think of an equivocal situation. And the equivocal
situation is indeed one which permits of two different meanings at the
same time, the one merely plausible, which is put forward by the
actors, the other a real one, which is given by the public. We see the
real meaning of the situation, because care has been taken to show us
every aspect of it; but each of the actors knows only one of these
aspects: hence the mistakes they make and the erroneous judgments they
pass both on what is going on around them and on what they are doing
themselves. We proceed from this erroneous judgment to the correct one,
we waver between the possible meaning and the real, and it is this
mental seesaw between two contrary interpretations which is at first
apparent in the enjoyment we derive from an equivocal situation. It is
natural that certain philosophers should have been specially struck by
this mental instability, and that some of them should regard the very
essence of the ludicrous as consisting in the collision or coincidence
of two judgments that contradict each other. Their definition, however,
is far from meeting every case, and even when it does, it defines--not
the principle of the ludicrous, but only one of its more or less
distant consequences. Indeed, it is easy to see that the stage-made
misunderstanding is nothing but a particular instance of a far more
general phenomenon,--the reciprocal interference of independent series,
and that, moreover, it is not laughable in itself, but only as a sign
of such an interference.
As a matter of fact, each of the characters in every stage-made
misunderstanding has his setting in an appropriate series of events
which he correctly interprets as far as he is concerned, and which give
the key-note to his words and actions. Each of the series peculiar to
the several characters develop independently, but at a certain moment
they meet under such conditions that the actions and words that belong
to one might just as well belong to another. Hence arise the
misunderstandings and the equivocal nature of the situation. But this
latter is not laughable in itself, it is so only because it reveals the
coincidence of the two independent series. The proof of this lies in
the fact that the author must be continually taxing his ingenuity to
recall our attention to the double fact of independence and
coincidence. This he generally succeeds in doing by constantly renewing
the vain threat of dissolving partnership between the two coinciding
series. Every moment the whole thing threatens to break down, but
manages to get patched up again; it is this diversion that excites
laughter, far more than the oscillation of the mind between two
contradictory ideas. It makes us laugh because it reveals to us the
reciprocal interference of two independent series, the real source of
the comic effect.
And so the stage-made misunderstanding is nothing more than one
particular instance, one means--perhaps the most artificial--of
illustrating the reciprocal interference of series, but it is not the
only one. Instead of two contemporary series, you might take one series
of events belonging to the past and another belonging to the present:
if the two series happen to coincide in our imagination, there will be
no resulting cross-purposes, and yet the same comic effect will
continue to take place. Think of Bonivard, captive in the Castle of
Chillon: one series of facts. Now picture to yourself Tartarin,
travelling in Switzerland, arrested and imprisoned: second series,
independent of the former. Now let Tartarin be manacled to Bonivard's
chain, thus making the two stories seem for a moment to coincide, and
you will get a very amusing scene, one of the most amusing that
Daudet's imagination has pictured. [Tartarin sur les Alpes, by Daudet.]
Numerous incidents of the mock-heroic style, if analysed, would reveal
the same elements. The transposition from the ancient to the
modern--always a laughable one--draws its inspiration from the same
idea. Labiche has made use of this method in every shape and form.
Sometimes he begins by building up the series separately, and then
delights in making them interfere with one another: he takes an
independent group--a wedding-party, for instance--and throws them into
altogether unconnected surroundings, into which certain coincidences
allow of their being foisted for the time being. Sometimes he keeps one
and the same set of characters right through the play, but contrives
that certain of these characters have something to conceal--have, in
fact, a secret understanding on the point--in short, play a smaller
comedy within the principal one: at one moment, one of the two comedies
is on the point of upsetting the other; the next, everything comes
right and the coincidence between the two series is restored.
Sometimes, even, he introduces into the actual series a purely
immaterial series of events, an inconvenient past, for instance, that
some one has an interest in concealing, but which is continually
cropping up in the present, and on each occasion is successfully
brought into line with situations with which it seemed destined to play
havoc. But in every case we find the two independent series, and also
their partial coincidence.
We will not carry any further this analysis of the methods of light
comedy. Whether we find reciprocal interference of series, inversion,
or repetition, we see that the objective is always the same--to obtain
what we have called a MECHANISATION of life. You take a set of actions
and relations and repeat it as it is, or turn it upside down, or
transfer it bodily to another set with which it partially
coincides--all these being processes that consist in looking upon life
as a repeating mechanism, with reversible action and interchangeable
parts. Actual life is comedy just so far as it produces, in a natural
fashion, actions of the same kind,--consequently, just so far as it
forgets itself, for were it always on the alert, it would be
ever-changing continuity, irrevertible progress, undivided unity. And
so the ludicrous in events may be defined as absentmindedness in
things, just as the ludicrous in an individual character always results
from some fundamental absentmindedness in the person, as we have
already intimated and shall prove later on. This absentmindedness in
events, however, is exceptional. Its results are slight. At any rate it
is incurable, so that it is useless to laugh at it. Therefore the idea
would never have occurred to any one of exaggerating that
absentmindedness, of converting it into a system and creating an art
for it, if laughter were not always a pleasure and mankind did not
pounce upon the slightest excuse for indulging in it. This is the real
explanation of light comedy, which holds the same relation to actual
life as does a jointed dancing-doll to a man walking,--being, as it is,
an artificial exaggeration of a natural rigidity in things. The thread
that binds it to actual life is a very fragile one. It is scarcely more
than a game which, like all games, depends on a previously accepted
convention. Comedy in character strikes far deeper roots into life.
With that kind of comedy we shall deal more particularly in the final
portion of our investigation. But we must first analyse a certain type
of the comic, in many respects similar to that of light comedy: the
comic in words.
II
There may be something artificial in making a special category for the
comic in words, since most of the varieties of the comic that we have
examined so far were produced through the medium of language. We must
make a distinction, however, between the comic EXPRESSED and the comic
CREATED by language. The former could, if necessary, be translated from
one language into another, though at the cost of losing the greater
portion of its significance when introduced into a fresh society
different in manners, in literature, and above all in association of
ideas. But it is generally impossible to translate the latter. It owes
its entire being to the structure of the sentence or to the choice of
the words. It does not set forth, by means of language, special cases
of absentmindedness in man or in events. It lays stress on lapses of
attention in language itself. In this case, it is language itself that
becomes comic.
Comic sayings, however, are not a matter of spontaneous generation; if
we laugh at them, we are equally entitled to laugh at their author.
This latter condition, however, is not indispensable, since the saying
or expression has a comic virtue of its own. This is proved by the fact
that we find it very difficult, in the majority of these cases, to say
whom we are laughing at, although at times we have a dim, vague feeling
that there is some one in the background.
Moreover, the person implicated is not always the speaker. Here it
seems as though we should draw an important distinction between the
WITTY (SPIRITUEL) and the COMIC. A word is said to be comic when it
makes us laugh at the person who utters it, and witty when it makes us
laugh either at a third party or at ourselves. But in most cases we can
hardly make up our minds whether the word is comic or witty. All that
we can say is that it is laughable.
Before proceeding, it might be well to examine more closely what is
meant by ESPRIT. A witty saying makes us at least smile; consequently,
no investigation into laughter would be complete did it not get to the
bottom of the nature of wit and throw light on the underlying idea. It
is to be feared, however, that this extremely subtle essence is one
that evaporates when exposed to the light.
Let us first make a distinction between the two meanings of the word
wit ESPRIT, the broader one and the more restricted. In the broader
meaning of the word, it would seem that what is called wit is a certain
DRAMATIC way of thinking. Instead of treating his ideas as mere
symbols, the wit sees them, he hears them and, above all, makes them
converse with one another like persons. He puts them on the stage, and
himself, to some extent, into the bargain. A witty nation is, of
necessity, a nation enamoured of the theatre. In every wit there is
something of a poet--just as in every good reader there is the making
of an actor. This comparison is made purposely, because a proportion
might easily be established between the four terms. In order to read
well we need only the intellectual side of the actor's art; but in
order to act well one must be an actor in all one's soul and body. In
just the same way, poetic creation calls for some degree of
self-forgetfulness, whilst the wit does not usually err in this
respect. We always get a glimpse of the latter behind what he says and
does. He is not wholly engrossed in the business, because he only
brings his intelligence into play. So any poet may reveal himself as a
wit when he pleases. To do this there will be no need for him to
acquire anything; it seems rather as though he would have to give up
something. He would simply have to let his ideas hold converse with one
another "for nothing, for the mere joy of the thing!" [Footnote: "Pour
rien, pour le plaisir" is a quotation from Victor Hugo's Marion
Delorme] He would only have to unfasten the double bond which keeps his
ideas in touch with his feelings and his soul in touch with life. In
short, he would turn into a wit by simply resolving to be no longer a
poet in feeling, but only in intelligence.
But if wit consists, for the most part, in seeing things SUB SPECIE
THEATRI, it is evidently capable of being specially directed to one
variety of dramatic art, namely, comedy. Here we have a more restricted
meaning of the term, and, moreover, the only one that interests us from
the point of view of the theory of laughter. What is here called WIT is
a gift for dashing off comic scenes in a few strokes--dashing them off,
however, so subtly, delicately and rapidly, that all is over as soon as
we begin to notice them.
Who are the actors in these scenes? With whom has the wit to deal?
First of all, with his interlocutors themselves, when his witticism is
a direct retort to one of them. Often with an absent person whom he
supposes to have spoken and to whom he is replying. Still oftener, with
the whole world,--in the ordinary meaning of the term,--which he takes
to task, twisting a current idea into a paradox, or making use of a
hackneyed phrase, or parodying some quotation or proverb. If we compare
these scenes in miniature with one another, we find they are almost
always variations of a comic theme with which we are well acquainted,
that of the "robber robbed." You take up a metaphor, a phrase, an
argument, and turn it against the man who is, or might be, its author,
so that he is made to say what he did not mean to say and lets himself
be caught, to some extent, in the toils of language. But the theme of
the "robber robbed" is not the only possible one. We have gone over
many varieties of the comic, and there is not one of them that is
incapable of being volatilised into a witticism.
Every witty remark, then, lends itself to an analysis, whose chemical
formula, so to say, we are now in a position to state. It runs as
follows: Take the remark, first enlarge it into a regular scene, then
find out the category of the comic to which the scene evidently
belongs: by this means you reduce the witty remark to its simplest
elements and obtain a full explanation of it.
Let us apply this method to a classic example. "Your chest hurts me"
(J'AI MAL A VOTRE POITRINE) wrote Mme. de Sevigne to her ailing
daughter--clearly a witty saying. If our theory is correct, we need
only lay stress upon the saying, enlarge and magnify it, and we shall
see it expand into a comic scene. Now, we find this very scene, ready
made, in the AMOUR MEDECIN of Moliere. The sham doctor, Clitandre, who
has been summoned to attend Sganarelle's daughter, contents himself
with feeling Sganarelle's own pulse, whereupon, relying on the sympathy
there must be between father and daughter, he unhesitatingly concludes:
"Your daughter is very ill!" Here we have the transition from the witty
to the comical. To complete our analysis, then, all we have to do is to
discover what there is comical in the idea of giving a diagnosis of the
child after sounding the father or the mother. Well, we know that one
essential form of comic fancy lies in picturing to ourselves a living
person as a kind of jointed dancing-doll, and that frequently, with the
object of inducing us to form this mental picture, we are shown two or
more persons speaking and acting as though attached to one another by
invisible strings. Is not this the idea here suggested when we are led
to materialise, so to speak, the sympathy we postulate as existing
between father and daughter?
We now see how it is that writers on wit have perforce confined
themselves to commenting on the extraordinary complexity of the things
denoted by the term without ever succeeding in defining it. There are
many ways of being witty, almost as many as there are of being the
reverse. How can we detect what they have in common with one another,
unless we first determine the general relationship between the witty
and the comic? Once, however, this relationship is cleared up,
everything is plain sailing. We then find the same connection between
the comic and the witty as exists between a regular scene and the
fugitive suggestion of a possible one. Hence, however numerous the
forms assumed by the comic, wit will possess an equal number of
corresponding varieties. So that the comic, in all its forms, is what
should be defined first, by discovering (a task which is already quite
difficult enough) the clue that leads from one form to the other. By
that very operation wit will have been analysed, and will then appear
as nothing more than the comic in a highly volatile state. To follow
the opposite plan, however, and attempt directly to evolve a formula
for wit, would be courting certain failure. What should we think of a
chemist who, having ever so many jars of a certain substance in his
laboratory, would prefer getting that substance from the atmosphere, in
which merely infinitesimal traces of its vapour are to be found?
But this comparison between the witty and the comic is also indicative
of the line we must take in studying the comic in words. On the one
hand, indeed, we find there is no essential difference between a word
that is comic and one that is witty; on the other hand, the latter,
although connected with a figure of speech, invariably calls up the
image, dim or distinct, of a comic scene. This amounts to saying that
the comic in speech should correspond, point by point, with the comic
in actions and in situations, and is nothing more, if one may so
express oneself, than their projection on to the plane of words. So let
us return to the comic in actions and in situations, consider the chief
methods by which it is obtained, and apply them to the choice of words
and the building up of sentences. We shall thus have every possible
form of the comic in words as well as every variety of wit.
1. Inadvertently to say or do what we have no intention of saying or
doing, as a result of inelasticity or momentum, is, as we are aware,
one of the main sources of the comic. Thus, absentmindedness is
essentially laughable, and so we laugh at anything rigid, ready-made,
mechanical in gesture, attitude and even facial expression. Do we find
this kind of rigidity in language also? No doubt we do, since language
contains ready-made formulas and stereotyped phrases. The man who
always expressed himself in such terms would invariably be comic. But
if an isolated phrase is to be comic in itself, when once separated
from the person who utters it, it must be something more than
ready-made, it must bear within itself some sign which tells us, beyond
the possibility of doubt, that it was uttered automatically. This can
only happen when the phrase embodies some evident absurdity, either a
palpable error or a contradiction in terms. Hence the following general
rule: A COMIC MEANING IS INVARIABLY OBTAINED WHEN AN ABSURD IDEA IS
FITTED INTO A WELL-ESTABLISHED PHRASE-FORM.
"Ce sabre est le plus beau jour de ma vie," said M. Prudhomme.
Translate the phrase into English or German and it becomes purely
absurd, though it is comic enough in French. The reason is that "le
plus beau jour de ma vie" is one of those ready-made phrase-endings to
which a Frenchman's ear is accustomed. To make it comic, then, we need
only clearly indicate the automatism of the person who utters it. This
is what we get when we introduce an absurdity into the phrase. Here the
absurdity is by no means the source of the comic, it is only a very
simple and effective means of making it obvious.
We have quoted only one saying of M. Prudhomme, but the majority of
those attributed to him belong to the same class. M. Prudhomme is a man
of ready-made phrases. And as there are ready-made phrases in all
languages, M. Prudhomme is always capable of being transposed, though
seldom of being translated. At times the commonplace phrase, under
cover of which the absurdity slips in, is not so readily noticeable. "I
don't like working between meals," said a lazy lout. There would be
nothing amusing in the saying did there not exist that salutary precept
in the realm of hygiene: "One should not eat between meals."
Sometimes, too, the effect is a complicated one. Instead of one
commonplace phrase-form, there are two or three which are dovetailed
into each other. Take, for instance, the remark of one of the
characters in a play by Labiche, "Only God has the right to kill His
fellow-creature." It would seem that advantage is here taken of two
separate familiar sayings; "It is God who disposes of the lives of
men," and, "It is criminal for a man to kill his fellow-creature." But
the two sayings are combined so as to deceive the ear and leave the
impression of being one of those hackneyed sentences that are accepted
as a matter of course. Hence our attention nods, until we are suddenly
aroused by the absurdity of the meaning. These examples suffice to show
how one of the most important types of the comic can be projected--in a
simplified form--on the plane of speech. We will now proceed to a form
which is not so general.
2. "We laugh if our attention is diverted to the physical in a person
when it is the moral that is in question," is a law we laid down in the
first part of this work. Let us apply it to language. Most words might
be said to have a PHYSICAL and a MORAL meaning, according as they are
interpreted literally or figuratively. Every word, indeed, begins by
denoting a concrete object or a material action; but by degrees the
meaning of the word is refined into an abstract relation or a pure
idea. If, then, the above law holds good here, it should be stated as
follows: "A comic effect is obtained whenever we pretend to take
literally an expression which was used figuratively"; or, "Once our
attention is fixed on the material aspect of a metaphor, the idea
expressed becomes comic."
In the phrase, "Tous les arts sont freres" (all the arts are brothers),
the word "frere" (brother) is used metaphorically to indicate a more or
less striking resemblance. The word is so often used in this way, that
when we hear it we do not think of the concrete, the material
connection implied in every relationship. We should notice it more if
we were told that "Tous les arts sont cousins," for the word "cousin"
is not so often employed in a figurative sense; that is why the word
here already assumes a slight tinge of the comic. But let us go further
still, and suppose that our attention is attracted to the material side
of the metaphor by the choice of a relationship which is incompatible
with the gender of the two words composing the metaphorical expression:
we get a laughable result. Such is the well-known saying, also
attributed to M. Prudhomme, "Tous les arts (masculine) sont soeurs
(feminine)." "He is always running after a joke," was said in
Boufflers' presence regarding a very conceited fellow. Had Boufflers
replied, "He won't catch it," that would have been the beginning of a
witty saying, though nothing more than the beginning, for the word
"catch" is interpreted figuratively almost as often as the word "run";
nor does it compel us more strongly than the latter to materialise the
image of two runners, the one at the heels of the other. In order that
the rejoinder may appear to be a thoroughly witty one, we must borrow
from the language of sport an expression so vivid and concrete that we
cannot refrain from witnessing the race in good earnest. This is what
Boufflers does when he retorts, "I'll back the joke!"
We said that wit often consists in extending the idea of one's
interlocutor to the point of making him express the opposite of what he
thinks and getting him, so to say, entrapt by his own words. We must
now add that this trap is almost always some metaphor or comparison the
concrete aspect of which is turned against him. You may remember the
dialogue between a mother and her son in the Faux Bonshommes: "My dear
boy, gambling on 'Change is very risky. You win one day and lose the
next."--"Well, then, I will gamble only every other day." In the same
play too we find the following edifying conversation between two
company-promoters: "Is this a very honourable thing we are doing? These
unfortunate shareholders, you see, we are taking the money out of their
very pockets...."--"Well, out of what do you expect us to take it?"
An amusing result is likewise obtainable whenever a symbol or an emblem
is expanded on its concrete side, and a pretence is made of retaining
the same symbolical value for this expansion as for the emblem itself.
In a very lively comedy we are introduced to a Monte Carlo official,
whose uniform is covered with medals, although he has only received a
single decoration. "You see, I staked my medal on a number at
roulette," he said, "and as the number turned up, I was entitled to
thirty-six times my stake." This reasoning is very similar to that
offered by Giboyer in the Effrontes. Criticism is made of a bride of
forty summers who is wearing orange-blossoms with her wedding costume:
"Why, she was entitled to oranges, let alone orange-blossoms!" remarked
Giboyer.
But we should never cease were we to take one by one all the laws we
have stated, and try to prove them on what we have called the plane of
language. We had better confine ourselves to the three general
propositions of the preceding section. We have shown that "series of
events" may become comic either by repetition, by inversion, or by
reciprocal interference. Now we shall see that this is also the case
with series of words.
To take series of events and repeat them in another key or another
environment, or to invert them whilst still leaving them a certain
meaning, or mix them up so that their respective meanings jostle one
another, is invariably comic, as we have already said, for it is
getting life to submit to be treated as a machine. But thought, too, is
a living thing. And language, the translation of thought, should be
just as living. We may thus surmise that a phrase is likely to become
comic if, though reversed, it still makes sense, or if it expresses
equally well two quite independent sets of ideas, or, finally, if it
has been obtained by transposing an idea into some key other than its
own. Such, indeed, are the three fundamental laws of what might be
called THE COMIC TRANSFORMATION OF SENTENCES, as we shall show by a few
examples.
Let it first be said that these three laws are far from being of equal
importance as regards the theory of the ludicrous. INVERSION is the
least interesting of the three. It must be easy of application,
however, for it is noticeable that, no sooner do professional wits hear
a sentence spoken than they experiment to see if a meaning cannot be
obtained by reversing it,--by putting, for instance, the subject in
place of the object, and the object in place of the subject. It is not
unusual for this device to be employed for refuting an idea in more or
less humorous terms. One of the characters in a comedy of Labiche
shouts out to his neighbour on the floor above, who is in the habit of
dirtying his balcony, "What do you mean by emptying your pipe on to my
terrace?" The neighbour retorts, "What do you mean by putting your
terrace under my pipe?" There is no necessity to dwell upon this kind
of wit, instances of which could easily be multiplied. The RECIPROCAL
INTERFERENCE of two sets of ideas in the same sentence is an
inexhaustible source of amusing varieties. There are many ways of
bringing about this interference, I mean of bracketing in the same
expression two independent meanings that apparently tally. The least
reputable of these ways is the pun. In the pun, the same sentence
appears to offer two independent meanings, but it is only an
appearance; in reality there are two different sentences made up of
different words, but claiming to be one and the same because both have
the same sound. We pass from the pun, by imperceptible stages, to the
true play upon words. Here there is really one and the same sentence
through which two different sets of ideas are expressed, and we are
confronted with only one series of words; but advantage is taken of the
different meanings a word may have, especially when used figuratively
instead of literally. So that in fact there is often only a slight
difference between the play upon words on the one hand, and a poetic
metaphor or an illuminating comparison on the other. Whereas an
illuminating comparison and a striking image always seem to reveal the
close harmony that exists between language and nature, regarded as two
parallel forms of life, the play upon words makes us think somehow of a
negligence on the part of language, which, for the time being, seems to
have forgotten its real function and now claims to accommodate things
to itself instead of accommodating itself to things. And so the play
upon words always betrays a momentary LAPSE OF ATTENTION in language,
and it is precisely on that account that it is amusing.
INVERSION and RECIPROCAL INTERFERENCE, after all, are only a certain
playfulness of the mind which ends at playing upon words. The comic in
TRANSPOSITION is much more far-reaching. Indeed, transposition is to
ordinary language what repetition is to comedy.
We said that repetition is the favourite method of classic comedy. It
consists in so arranging events that a scene is reproduced either
between the same characters under fresh circumstances or between fresh
characters under the same circumstances. Thus we have, repeated by
lackeys in less dignified language, a scene already played by their
masters. Now, imagine ideas expressed in suitable style and thus placed
in the setting of their natural environment. If you think of some
arrangement whereby they are transferred to fresh surroundings, while
maintaining their mutual relations, or, in other words, if you can
induce them to express themselves in an altogether different style and
to transpose themselves into another key, you will have language itself
playing a comedy--language itself made comic. There will be no need,
moreover, actually to set before us both expressions of the same ideas,
the transposed expression and the natural one. For we are acquainted
with the natural one--the one which we should have chosen
instinctively. So it will be enough if the effort of comic invention
bears on the other, and on the other alone. No sooner is the second set
before us than we spontaneously supply the first. Hence the following
general rule: A COMIC EFFECT IS ALWAYS OBTAINABLE BY TRANSPOSING THE
NATURE EXPRESSION OF AN IDEA INTO ANOTHER KEY.
The means of transposition are so many and varied, language affords so
rich a continuity of themes and the comic is here capable of passing
through so great a number of stages, from the most insipid buffoonery
up to the loftiest forms of humour and irony, that we shall forego the
attempt to make out a complete list. Having stated the rule, we will
simply, here and there, verify its main applications.
In the first place, we may distinguish two keys at the extreme ends of
the scale, the solemn and the familiar. The most obvious effects are
obtained by merely transposing the one into the other, which thus
provides us with two opposite currents of comic fancy.
Transpose the solemn into the familiar and the result is parody. The
effect of parody, thus defined, extends to instances in which the idea
expressed in familiar terms is one that, if only in deference to
custom, ought to be pitched in another key. Take as an example the
following description of the dawn, quoted by Jean Paul Richter: "The
sky was beginning to change from black to red, like a lobster being
boiled." Note that the expression of old-world matters in terms of
modern life produces the same effect, by reason of the halo of poetry
which surrounds classical antiquity.
It is doubtless the comic in parody that has suggested to some
philosophers, and in particular to Alexander Bain, the idea of defining
the comic, in general, as a species of DEGRADATION. They describe the
laughable as causing something to appear mean that was formerly
dignified. But if our analysis is correct, degradation is only one form
of transposition, and transposition itself only one of the means of
obtaining laughter. There is a host of others, and the source of
laughter must be sought for much further back. Moreover, without going
so far, we see that while the transposition from solemn to trivial,
from better to worse, is comic, the inverse transposition may be even
more so.
It is met with as often as the other, and, apparently, we may
distinguish two main forms of it, according as it refers to the
PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS of an object or to its MORAL VALUE.
To speak of small things as though they were large is, in a general
way, TO EXAGGERATE. Exaggeration is always comic when prolonged, and
especially when systematic; then, indeed, it appears as one method of
transposition. It excites so much laughter that some writers have been
led to define the comic as exaggeration, just as others have defined it
as degradation. As a matter of fact, exaggeration, like degradation, is
only one form of one kind of the comic. Still, it is a very striking
form. It has given birth to the mock-heroic poem, a rather
old-fashioned device, I admit, though traces of it are still to be
found in persons inclined to exaggerate methodically. It might often be
said of braggadocio that it is its mock-heroic aspect which makes us
laugh.
Far more artificial, but also far more refined, is the transposition
upwards from below when applied to the moral value of things, not to
their physical dimensions. To express in reputable language some
disreputable idea, to take some scandalous situation, some low-class
calling or disgraceful behaviour, and describe them in terms of the
utmost "RESPECTABILITY," is generally comic. The English word is here
purposely employed, as the practice itself is characteristically
English. Many instances of it may be found in Dickens and Thackeray,
and in English literature generally. Let us remark, in passing, that
the intensity of the effect does not here depend on its length. A word
is sometimes sufficient, provided it gives us a glimpse of an entire
system of transposition accepted in certain social circles and reveals,
as it were, a moral organisation of immorality. Take the following
remark made by an official to one of his subordinates in a novel of
Gogol's, "Your peculations are too extensive for an official of your
rank."
Summing up the foregoing, then, there are two extreme terms of
comparison, the very large and the very small, the best and the worst,
between which transposition may be effected in one direction or the
other. Now, if the interval be gradually narrowed, the contrast between
the terms obtained will be less and less violent, and the varieties of
comic transposition more and more subtle.
The most common of these contrasts is perhaps that between the real and
the ideal, between what is and what ought to be. Here again
transposition may take place in either direction. Sometimes we state
what ought to be done, and pretend to believe that this is just what is
actually being done; then we have IRONY. Sometimes, on the contrary, we
describe with scrupulous minuteness what is being done, and pretend to
believe that this is just what ought to be done; such is often the
method of HUMOUR. Humour, thus denned, is the counterpart of irony.
Both are forms of satire, but irony is oratorical in its nature, whilst
humour partakes of the scientific. Irony is emphasised the higher we
allow ourselves to be uplifted by the idea of the good that ought to
be: thus irony may grow so hot within us that it becomes a kind of
high-pressure eloquence. On the other hand, humour is the more
emphasised the deeper we go down into an evil that actually is, in
order t o set down its details in the most cold-blooded indifference.
Several authors, Jean Paul amongst them, have noticed that humour
delights in concrete terms, technical details, definite facts. If our
analysis is correct, this is not an accidental trait of humour, it is
its very essence. A humorist is a moralist disguised as a scientist,
something like an anatomist who practises dissection with the sole
object of filling us with disgust; so that humour, in the restricted
sense in which we are here regarding the word, is really a
transposition from the moral to the scientific.
By still further curtailing the interval between the terms transposed,
we may now obtain more and more specialised types of comic
transpositions. Thus, certain professions have a technical vocabulary:
what a wealth of laughable results have been obtained by transposing
the ideas of everyday life into this professional jargon! Equally comic
is the extension of business phraseology to the social relations of
life,--for instance, the phrase of one of Labiche's characters in
allusion to an invitation he has received, "Your kindness of the third
ult.," thus transposing the commercial formula, "Your favour of the
third instant." This class of the comic, moreover, may attain a special
profundity of its own when it discloses not merely a professional
practice, but a fault in character. Recall to mind the scenes in the
Faux Bonshommes and the Famille Benoiton, where marriage is dealt with
as a business affair, and matters of sentiment are set down in strictly
commercial language.
Here, however, we reach the point at which peculiarities of language
really express peculiarities of character, a closer investigation of
which we must hold over to the next chapter. Thus, as might have been
expected and may be seen from the foregoing, the comic in words follows
closely on the comic in situation and is finally merged, along with the
latter, in the comic in character. Language only attains laughable
results because it is a human product, modelled as exactly as possible
on the forms of the human mind. We feel it contains some living element
of our own life; and if this life of language were complete and
perfect, if there were nothing stereotype in it, if, in short, language
were an absolutely unified organism incapable of being split up into
independent organisms, it would evade the comic as would a soul whose
life was one harmonious whole, unruffled as the calm surface of a
peaceful lake. There is no pool, however, which has not some dead
leaves floating on its surface, no human soul upon which there do not
settle habits that make it rigid against itself by making it rigid
against others, no language, in short, so subtle and instinct with
life, so fully alert in each of its parts as to eliminate the
ready-made and oppose the mechanical operations of inversion,
transposition, etc., which one would fain perform upon it as on some
lifeless thing. The rigid, the ready--made, the mechanical, in contrast
with the supple, the ever-changing and the living, absentmindedness in
contrast with attention, in a word, automatism in contrast with free
activity, such are the defects that laughter singles out and would fain
correct. We appealed to this idea to give us light at the outset, when
starting upon the analysis of the ludicrous. We have seen it shining at
every decisive turning in our road. With its help, we shall now enter
upon a more important investigation, one that will, we hope, be more
instructive. We purpose, in short, studying comic characters, or rather
determining the essential conditions of comedy in character, while
endeavouring to bring it about that this study may contribute to a
better understanding of the real nature of art and the general relation
between art and life.