THE LAUGHABLE IN ART: COMEDY.
We have traced the development of laughter in the individual and in
the community with as little reference as possible to the influence of
Art. It has been assumed that the feelings which move us to laughter
are primal, and capable of expanding and deepening independently of
this influence. At the same time, it is certain that the educative
lead of the artist has been at work from a very early stage of human
development. We have found even in savage life the figure of the
“funny man,” the expert in lifting the sluice gates of social laughter
by means of jest and pantomime. Within the historical period, the
practice of engaging jesters for banquets, and social entertainments
generally, appears to go back to remote times and very simple social
conditions.[281] The finer and more methodical exercise of men’s gift
of laughter by these skilled choragi must have been a potent factor
in its development. We may now glance at the evolution of art on its
amusing and comic side.
This is no occasion for probing to its dark bottom the {344} problem
of the function of art. If we keep to the beginnings of the art of
ministering to men’s laughter, as we may study them among savages and
our own children, the theories which look to art for the expression
of an idea, or even of an emotion seeking for resonance, seem to have
but little relevance. It looks as if the amusing art grew out of that
simple social act which I have called a play-challenge, as illustrated
in the game of reciprocal tickling. Hence, the play-theory of art
serves particularly well for our present purpose. The quality of
beneficent productivity which is an essential of art may be supposed
to have grown distinct, as soon as an individual of superior cunning
in playing on the mirthful organ found himself _vis-à-vis_ with an
audience. No social impulse of an art-like character strikes out its
visible and audible effect more directly and more impressively than the
desire to raise a laugh.
Taking this view, we see that the art which moves us to mirth
illustrates the conative process in art-production. To amuse men, to
raise their spirits to the treble pitch of gaiety, pre-supposes the
desire to please. In all simple art-performance, this essentially
social motive works consciously and directly: the partly unconscious
art of the “fool” being here, of course, overlooked. In higher forms,
the will to move men merrily is, I believe, always present in normal
cases, and controls the whole art-process, though it may not be
consciously realised at every moment. In the case of the comic actor,
at any rate, a volitional control of his own feeling and its expression
seems to be a prime necessity. This is sufficiently illustrated in the
solemn aspect commonly assumed by the popular jester, in order to add
to the mirthful effect of his utterance.
It would be an interesting inquiry, if our limits allowed {345} of it,
to examine the means which art, as a whole, possesses for moving us to
laughter. This would open up the curious question of the symbolism of
colours and tones, and of their combinations, as expressive of mirthful
feeling and of jocose intention.
That laughter has for its proper excitant men and their doings, at
once suggests that only those arts which represent human ideas and
actions on a large scale have a considerable field for the exhibition
of the ludicrous. Architecture, apart from sculpture, is heavily
handicapped here. Music, as the expressive art _par excellence_, has a
certain though narrowly limited range of effect, as may be seen in the
characteristic rhythms, such as combinations of light staccato with
deep-pitched notes, incompleted phrases and so forth, which do duty
in comic opera. Some of this tickling effect is certainly due, not
to an expression of jocose feeling, but to the bizarre aspect of the
combination of sounds. And the same is probably true of the slightly
amusing effects of such grotesque combinations of colour as are common
in the costume of the harlequin, of the prince of mockers, and of
other more or less comic figures. The grotesque and amusing in dress,
that of the clown for example, is manifestly based on its suggestions,
especially those of wrong sex, wrong age and the like.
Passing by the comic directions of pictorial art, including the
highly developed process of modern political and other caricature,
the great _rôle_ in stimulating men’s laughing susceptibilities falls
to literature, and pre-eminently to dramatic literature and its
interpreter, the stage. Here, only, can the procession of human follies
display something of its variegated amplitude. Hither must we come, if
we would fain laugh our fill and know what resources art possesses for
playing on the whole gamut of our “risibility”. {346}
It would be well if we knew the beginnings of jocose literature. It
may be that the jest-books preserve for us forms resembling those
which these beginnings have taken. A short descriptive story of some
practical joke, or of some smart bit of repartee, may have grown
naturally enough out of the evening fire-side talk and become fixed
and handed down to new generations. The Mediæval Contes (fabliaux) may
be viewed as a slight expansion of such stories and fragments of talk.
This short anecdotal story would allow a certain scope for mimicry and
a crude art of elocution. A rudimentary form of comic acting, with its
mimic gestures and its facetious dialogue, would naturally take its
rise in the rehearsal of such a story by an acknowledged expert. The
bits of dialogue, at least, would enforce a certain amount of mimicry
of tones and gestures.
The beginnings of comedy, so far as we can get back to them, bear
out these conjectures. The humble birthplace of Greek comedy was the
village revel—a sort of merry harvest home—of the vintagers. At first,
we read, there was no actor, only a leader “who let off coarse and
scurrilous impromptus”.[282] Or, as another writer has it, Greek farce
began with mocking songs and ironical speeches during processions, the
Greeks being quick to mimic and to improvise.[283]
The dawn of our own comedy shows a somewhat similar process. It was in
an atmosphere of mirth that the child, half-seriously quizzing things
in order to laugh the more, was born. This may be seen by a reference
to the mirthful societies and their riotings which were a feature of
mediæval English life. The “feast of fools” was the great occasion for
satirical songs, and, later on, for dramas in which the {347} clergy
were more especially taken off. No doubt, as we shall see, there
existed in the old miracle-plays and moralities a simple dramatic form
capable of being transformed into comedy. Yet this transformation was
made possible by the spirit of mirth and revelry, which had some time
before rudely broken into the solemnity of the miracle-play.[284]
The full rise of the comic drama has had its social conditions. Mr.
Meredith has pointed to some of them, particularly the existence of an
intelligent middle class, and the recognition of woman’s status; to
which one may add, that of her conversational wit.[285] To these social
conditions might be added a national mood of gaiety, coming from some
new sense of lightened shoulders and a freer breathing.
The value of comedy as chief ministress to our laughter may be seen
by a mere glance at its many resources. It seems able to present to
the eye and ear all varieties of the amusing. As a show, it carries
on the fun of children’s make-believe play. It can set before us the
most grotesque aberrations of dress, carriage and manners. In its human
figures, again, it presents to us in forms of its own choosing the
full variety of laughable traits of mind and of character. Lastly, it
can exhibit in its plots the whole gamut of teasing and practical joke
which amuses ordinary men in real life.
We may defer illustration of the comic treatment of laughable traits of
character, and look for a moment at the ways in which the incidents of
comedy carry on the movements of primitive fun.
A glance will tell us that these incidents are woven out {348} of the
play and the practical jokes of merry youth. The boisterous fun of
the spectacle of a good beating, for which the lower savages have a
quick sense, and which is a standing dish at the circus, is a frequent
incident in comedy, both in the popular and boisterous variety of
Aristophanes and Plautus, and in the quieter and more intellectual one
of Molière.[286]
Another variety of amusing incident drawn from child-play and the
popular fun of the circus is a repetition of words, gestures or other
movements. These repetitions grow particularly funny when they take the
form of an alternate going and coming, or of ending and recommencing
a discourse. Amusing already in their semblance of purposeless play,
they sometimes grow more droll by assuming a look of irrepressibility,
as when the philosopher Pancrace in _Le Mariage forcé_ is again and
again pushed behind the coulisse and returns to renew his discourse. It
has been pointed out that such movements have something of the amusing
character of the toy known as Jack-in-the-box.[287]
Another class of repetitions, which we may call imitations, also
frequent on the comic stage, seems in like manner to reproduce easily
recognisable features of child’s play. Nothing is more characteristic
of the play-mood in young animals and in children alike than an
imitative {349} propagation of movement. The child’s game of making
faces is an excellent example. The liking of the stage for these
imitations shows how closely it remains in touch with primitive fun.
This is plain enough when the action imitated is disorderly, as we may
see in the rebuffs and counter-rebuffs of the circus. The repeated
beatings of the wife-beater in _Le Médecin malgré lui_ have something
of this diverting effect
The amusing repetitions wrought into the mechanism of comedy are, as
Molière may tell us, commonly far less aggressive. The reproduction of
the series of exclamations of Cléonte on the perfidy of his mistress by
his valet, Covielle, in _Le Bourgeois gentilhomme_, and the counterpart
to this, the slightly varied repetitions of the reproaches of Cléonte’s
mistress by her maid, are quite delightfully suggestive of a plot on
the part of Love to reduce his victims to one level of imbecility.[288]
Comedy, both ancient and modern, is full of trickery and dupery.
A whole play may be one big piece of fooling, ending for the most
part in a merry scene in which the deluded victim or victims come
to their senses again. The spectator, who is in the secret, enjoys
sympathetically the laughter of the plot-maker.
One of the simplest and earliest comic devices, another outgrowth from
child’s play, seems to be a disguise. The figures of comedy towards
whom our laughter is guided are not gifted with the finest of visions,
and a small amount of disguise, especially when it meets and flatters
their desires, suffices for complete deception. Classic comedy and that
of Shakespeare make large use of such trickery. {350}
But a strange dress and other means of disguise are by no means always
necessary for the befooling. When the credulous mood is on, the victim,
whether fish or man, will rise to the crudest of artificial imitations,
and comedy fastens on its victims when they are in this mood, as in the
case of Malvolio, M. Jourdain and the rest.
Sometimes the comedian prepares for the needed deception by throwing
its victim into a fit of absent-mindedness. A good example may be found
in the scene between Arnolphe and the notary in Molière’s _L’École
des Femmes_, where the tongues of the two make a pretence of running
on together, while the two brains that move them remain in a state
of perfect mutual misunderstanding. It is another kind of amusing
self-deception when the comic figure, again showing his descent from
the clown, undertakes to do something, and instantly displays a
complete inability to carry out his undertaking. This is illustrated in
a less obvious manner in _Le Bourgeois gentilhomme_ by the behaviour
of Cléonte, who, after quarrelling with his mistress, and begging his
valet to “lend a hand” to his spite and to sustain his resolve to bear
down any remains of his foolish love, instantly afterwards protests
against the obedient servant’s depreciations of the lady.
The comic person must be mercilessly attacked now and again, if the
spectator is to get his fill of merriment. Molière again gives us the
illustration. The scene in which the miser’s son, Cléante, playfully
holds the father as in a vice, as he takes off the ring from the old
gentleman’s finger and offers it as if in his behalf to the lady they
both desire to wed, has the full flavour of the retaliative joke.
The laugh which is “malicieux” though not “amer” comes in a large
wave when the deception is a kicking over of traces which have become
galling. The tricking of the {351} severe guardian, parental or other,
illustrated by Terence in the _Adelphi_, and by Molière in _L’École
des Femmes_, _L’École des Maris_ and other works, yields a lusty
gratification as a practical joke directed against an oppressor.
A good deal of the fun of comedy may easily be seen to flow from
a bizarre placing of a person, especially the setting of him in a
situation where he has to do what he is not accustomed to do. If false
appearances have to be kept up, so much the better. The tricks by
which the sham doctor Sganarelle tries to play up to his part in _Le
Médecin malgré lui_ are of the broadly comic. A diverting situation
may be obtained in other ways, as when lovers who have fallen out and
are in the most doleful of moods have to meet. The subjection of the
arch-hypocrite Tartuffe to the watchful eye of Orgon’s son is pregnant
of comic effect.
As already hinted, comedy reflects those movements of social laughter
which have been dealt with in a previous chapter. The works of
Aristophanes are a storehouse for one who seeks illustrations of
the popular attitude towards the new, when this lends itself to a
buffoonish inflation. The comic stage is conservative in the sense that
it is ready to ridicule whatever wears the look of a bizarre novelty.
The importation of foreign dress and manners has been a well-recognised
source of merriment in modern plays.
With grotesque innovations may be set the affectations of superior
manners, fashions of speech and the rest, for which the laughter-loving
public has had a quick eye. The exposure of an excessive fondness
for using fine expressions, especially foreign ones, has always, one
suspects, had an exhilarating effect on an educated audience. The
preciosity of Molière’s dames lives as the great example of a culte
of “the fine shades,” carried to the point of the irresistibly droll.
{352}
The well-recognised social antagonisms, again, lend to comedy all their
store of the amusing. The droll side of the bloodless feud between man
and woman comes into view in all stages of the development of the art.
It will, of course, vary in its mode of presentment with the social
conditions of the time it represents, and more especially with the
status of woman. In the comedy of Aristophanes, the mutual chaff of
the sexes is a constant source of incidental effect and a main motive
of two plays.[289] Yet the part taken by woman in the dialogue is
exceedingly small.[290] The Greek assumption of her inferiority meets
us with a charming frankness. The notion of her rising to a higher
place in civic life is handled with a buffoonish extravagance which
must have delighted conservative husbands. When the poet wishes to
show up the folly of the Athenian war-party he invents a revolt of
the dames, who by certain effective measures, connubial and other,
manage to the lasting shame of their betters to bring about peace.
The triumph of the inferior here reminds one of the hilarious victory
won by the savage women in the art of rowing. The Greek comedy as a
whole treated women, including hetaerae, with copious abuse;[291] yet
in Latin comedy, at any rate, the woman now and again gets the better
of the man. In the _Asinaria_ of Plautus, an amorous old man, one of
the favourite figures of comedy, is finely chastised by the wife who
surprises his secret.
The interminable contest of man and woman carries with it the rivalry
of the home and the tavern—or, as we should say to-day, the Club. In
Plautus, who goes for a large {353} licence in pleasure, the opposition
is emphasised. Terence, by introducing a more becoming conception of
feminine nature and married life, prepared the way for a more equal
intercourse between man and woman. It is, however, only under the
improved conditions of modern family and social life that the verbal
duel of the sexes in comedy has grown keen and brilliant.
Another and primitive relation, that of old and young, or, in its
special form, of father and child, amply displays its possibilities
of fun on the comic stage. In the newer Attic comedy, we are told,
representations of the old became frequent, now as austere and
avaricious, now as fond and tender-hearted.[292] The contrast of the
severe “Governor” and the fond “Papa,” which we have seen illustrated
in Terence and Molière, clearly points to the fact that comedy, as play
designed expressly for merry youth, favours the son’s case, and seeks
to relax the paternal leading strings.
Just as the too weighty rule of a father is apt to be laughingly pushed
aside by comedy, so is that of the master. The intriguing, cheating
valet of Latin comedy is the ancestor of many a domestic swindler,
down to the Mr. Morgan whose sudden disappearance was regretted by
Major Pendennis. The outwitted master, like the outwitted husband,
is a comic figure that excites but little pity; perhaps, because the
getting the better of one in power by his subordinate is never wanting
in the agreeable look of a merry equalising of things. Other “humours”
of social groups, that of trader, money-lender, and their clients, for
example, are, as suggested in an earlier chapter, reflected in comedy.
The same flavour of fun, the same kinship to child’s play, is
recognisable in the speech of the comic stage. {354} Word-play here
is merely the lighter interlude in what as a whole has much of the
character of a game, the contest of rapier-like tongues in comic
dialogue.
Men have written weightily on the nature of wit and its relation to
intellect in general and to humour. Their discourses seem hardly
to capture its finer spirit. Locke started the discussion by his
well-known distinction between wit and judgment, the former consisting
in a bringing together of ideas with quickness and variety wherein can
be found any resemblance or congruity; the latter in discriminating
and separating ideas.[293] Addison, who accepts this definition in
the main, is bound to add that, though wit is generally produced by
resemblance and congruity of ideas, it is very often produced by their
opposition.[294] Hazlitt follows Addison in including likeness and
opposition. Wit, according to him, “is an arbitrary juxtaposition of
dissonant ideas, for some lively purpose of assimilation or contrast,
generally of both.”[295] All this, though it hints at a distinctive
manner of intellectual activity, misses the mark by busying itself in
the main with the question of a particular kind of relation of ideas.
The rather solemn treatment of puns by these serious writers is
characteristic. Addison deals with them under the head of false wit,
and bravely attacks the ages for upholding the practice.[296] For thus
spurning the humble pun, he was rendered blind by the god of laughter
to the real nature of wit, as essentially a mode of intellectual play.
As the etymology of the word suggests, wit is not so much a special
faculty concerned with a particular class of relations, as an attitude
or manner of behaviour of the {355} intelligence as a whole. It
illustrates her most lively and agile gait, and is characterised by
readiness of mind, quickness of perception, ingenuity in following
out hints of quite unexpected contrasts, similarities, aims, causes,
reasons, and the other apparent belongings of an idea. As tending to
sportiveness, it loves an intellectual chase for its own sake, and
revels in sudden transitions, doublings, and the whole game of verbal
hide and seek.[297]
According to this view, wit is a talent which has been especially
developed by a proper exercise of one of the chief functions of the
social animal, conversation. This has its light and entertaining
variety, talk, which when it reaches the perfection of an art becomes
a kind of game. A subject is tossed out like a ball and each side then
tries to strike it in turn and so keep the game going. Something of
serious purpose may be behind, as a half wish to illumine the subject,
but the main interest lies in the game itself, in the exhilarating
pleasure of crossing the intellectual foils with a worthy opponent.
Yet, though a game, talk is commonly carried on by persons who are not
merely fellow-players. As we have seen, witty dialogue flourishes when
some force of repulsion as well as of attraction is involved, as that
between a would-be seller and his needy yet stand-off buyer, or between
a wooer and a woman concerned not to make winning too easy. Where, as
between two rivals, the situation is conducive to warmth, the wit will
be apt to grow pungent. As Addison reminds us, wit is often developed
in an unequal game, between a “butt” and his assailants, the butt
knowing now and again, like Sir John Falstaff, how “to get the laugh of
his side”.[298]
The art of witty exchange, like that of using foils, clearly implies
self-restraint; and in both cases the desirable {356} coolness is
greatly furthered by the presence of the impartial spectator. It is
possible that husband and wife first learned to spar jocosely by having
to carry on disputes in the presence of outside hearers.
Taking this view of wit, we may see how word-play inevitably comes
into it. The pun of childish years, which merely tricks the ear by an
accidental doubleness of meaning, need not be considered here. It is
only when the ambiguity has value for laughter, when it can be turned
to some merry purpose, that it comes under the eye of art. Word-play
clearly tends to run into thought-play. Some of the best-known “mots”
will be found to involve the double-sense of the pun, like the praise
awarded by the witty King to one of his courtiers in the remark that
he was never in the way and never out of the way. It is the deep sense
discernible through the verbal appearance of a self-contradiction which
charms and entertains here.[299]
It seems to follow that the laughter excited in spectator or reader by
a display of wit is slightly complex. It has in it something of the
child’s laughter of admiration at what is new, rather startling, and
fine, of his gay response to a play-challenge, and of a sympathetic
rejoicing with the combatant who, by showing his skill, obtains an
advantage over his antagonist.
The dialogue of comedy and of the fiction which adopts the comic point
of view will make use of these verbal sports, these doublings of
the intellectual chase, at the hint of ambiguous language. They are
refreshing, they enlarge the scope of the witty combat, and they help
to maintain the mirthful temper of the spectator. Their use may be
{357} illustrated throughout the history of comedy. Thus, we find in
the comedy of Aristophanes much chaffing of the sexes and punning. The
same is true of Plautus. In the merry comedy of Shakespeare we have
still an abundance of puns, also a great advance in the art of the
verbal foils, especially as crossed by man and woman, more particularly
on the side of the latter. Molière’s quieter and more thoughtful
discourse, though now and then it finds room for a pun, illustrates the
finer art of witty combat, in which the foils seem to have been tipped
with a softer button.
We have so far dwelt on those elements of comedy which seem plainly
derivable from simple forms of fun, as seen in child’s play and the
laughter of primitive folk. There remains what is in some ways the most
interesting feature, the comic presentation of character in action and
speech.
It is customary to classify comedies into those of Incident, of Manners
and of Character. Such a division must not, however, mislead us.
The three ingredients are present in every comedy. If Aristophanes
depends largely on incident, he only gets his fun by choosing comic
characters—the sophist, say, or the commercial explorer endowed with
wings. In the so-called comedy of Manners of Congreve and his school,
the persons, such as they are, undoubtedly form a main support of the
entertaining action. Molière, though he relies chiefly on character,
can only give us comedy by inventing situations in which his figures
will have flashed on them the droll light of the comic stage. What
is meant by the above classification is pretty plainly that in some
comedies the characters are more central, are more finely evolved, and
attract a much larger attention.
That the evolution of comedy has, in the main, been an advance in the
presentment of character, as judged {358} both by the variety and
the complexity of the personalities depicted, and by the fulness and
definiteness of the presentation, is just what we might have expected.
It seems certain that, with the progress of civilisation, men and
women have grown more complex and more varied, both intellectually and
morally, and further that the interest in character and the capability
of understanding it have developed concurrently.
A word on the general conditions of a presentation of character in
comedy. For one thing, dramatic construction, as compared with that
of prose fiction, has certain obvious limits set to the delineation
of character. The art is too wise to attempt a full presentment of so
complex a group of traits as we find in a developed individuality.
It illustrates, however, degrees of fulness in the presentation of
personality, and the finer art of drama may produce its impression
of a concrete person very much as a skilful painter does within the
limits of a rough sketch by a few master strokes. Yet without the
actor’s visible embodiment of the part, the full impression of a
concrete individual would be difficult within the limits of dramatic
construction.
In the case of comedy, moreover, there is another reason for the
limitation of the art of developing individual character. The
superlative æsthetic value of the ludicrous aspect of character imposes
on the writer an unusual degree of simplification, of something like
a reduction of the concrete personality to an abstraction. The comic
entertainment afforded by the presentation, say, of a swelling vanity,
springs from our keeping the mental eye fixed in merry expectation of
the coming developments of the laughable trait. If, then, only this
core of the character, as the mood of the spectator estimates it, is
clearly presented and sufficiently illustrated, {359} both in its
immediate manifestations and in its effects on the rest of the man, a
very shadowy reinstatement of this remainder will suffice.
This conclusion seems clearly borne out by the common way of speaking
of the great comic figures as “types”; for to view a character
as typical means that we are interested in the person, less as a
particular individual, than as an example of a certain sort of person.
The common practice of writers of comedy, ancient and modern, of
marking their characters by appropriate names, the Braggadocio, the
Miser, the Misanthrope, and so forth, shows that authors recognise this
typical function.
Such comic representation of type will always have in it something of
the nature of exaggeration. The laughable trait, in order to raise the
tide of merriment to its full height, must itself be raised to a higher
power and displayed in the hypertrophic volume it tends to assume when
the balancing forces of the normal man are greatly reduced. Yet, to
say this is not to say that the common distinction between a lifeless
abstraction and a living character has no meaning in comedy. There
is a vast difference between the rigid abstractions of early modern
comedy, before the art had extricated itself from the leading strings
of the morality plays, and the relatively full and freely moving
figures which we encounter in Molière’s plays. On the other side, the
always controlled expansion of an amusing trait in the comic character
is to be clearly marked off from that forcing of expression up to the
dimensions of a distortion which is the essence of caricature.
A glance at the history of comedy will show us how, with its
development, there has grown a finer recognition of the comic value of
character and a corresponding skill in the presentation of it. {360}
The comedy of Aristophanes illustrates the art of comic
character-drawing in its infancy. Here, where the comic muse has not
yet left behind her the Bacchanalian rout; where the scene is apt to be
violently transported, now to mid-air, now to the abode of the gods,
and now to Hades; where the boisterous fun in its genial onslaught
spares neither deity, poet nor statesman; and where the farcical
reaches such a pass as to show us competitors for the favour of Demos
offering to blow that worthy’s nose; there would seem to be no room for
the portrayal of character. And, in truth, the problem of constructing
character was in a way obviated by calling in living or historical
personages familiar to the spectators. Yet even in this riotous
atmosphere, where the eyes of the spectator must have been half-blinded
by laughter, we may discern the dim beginnings of the art of comic
portraiture. Not only have we now and again, as in the litigious old
gentleman in the _Wasps_, hints of a typical comic figure, we have
illustrated in the historical figures themselves, Socrates, Cleon,
Euripides, a rude art of type-delineation.[300]
In the later Greek and the Latin comedy we find ourselves in a less
turbulent scene where the air is clearer, and things can be viewed with
some steadiness. In Plautus, the poet of the masses and the taverns,
the spirit of riotous buffoonery proved itself to be still alive. Yet
the confinement of the scene not only to earth but to its familiar
haunts, and the introduction of the love-motive, even though in its
baser form, gave new scope for the exhibition of comic varieties of
character. Even in Plautus we find sketches, not, indeed, of a moral
type as we find elsewhere, but of a representation of some social
class or calling, with {361} its characteristics forcibly set forth,
as in the boastful soldier, the cheating servant, and the stingy
money-lender. An approximation to the illustration of a moral type may,
perhaps, be detected in the amorous old man in the _Asinaria_. It is,
however, in the work of Menander and his Roman adapter Terence that we
must look for the real advance. In the plays of Terence, written for
the educated Romans, the figures assume something of respectability.
Thus the father ceases, as with Plautus, to be a sort of football
for filial buffoons to kick about, and grows into a character worthy
of study; and the contrast between a foolish excess of authority and
a wise lenience, given us in the two fathers in the _Adelphi_, has
been the model for more than one modern writer. In Terence, too, the
family begins to come by its own in its tussle with the rowdyism of
the tavern, and this is no small gain for the comic delineation of
character.[301]
The circumstance that modern comedy took its rise in the moralities,
with their personifications of evil and the rest, readily explains how
certain broad types of ignoble character were set in the forefront of
its scene. These appear already in the later moralities, for example,
“Like will to Like”. In the work which marks the full transition from
the interlude of the didactic morality to the comedy, “Ralph Roister
Doister” (_c._ 1550), we have outlined one of the valuable figures in
the comic world, the vainglorious cowardly man, the victim of the most
entertaining of delusions.[302]
In the comedy of the Elizabethans, Ben Jonson and Massinger, it is
easy to trace this influence, disguised though {362} it is sometimes by
that of classical comedy. In Jonson’s “Every Man in his own Humour,”
said to be the first important comedy of character in our literature,
the source of entertainment is laid, not in a merry plot, but in the
presentation of a variety of characters which display themselves in
odd fashions and novelties of conduct. It may be roughly true, as
Taine says, with Molière present to his imagination, that the method
pursued is to take an abstract quality and put together all the actions
to which it gives rise.[303] In other words, the object-lesson of the
morality is still too near, and the dramatist has not learned how to
make his comic characters move and grow under the spectator’s eye. Yet,
if we compare Bobadil with a braggart of Plautus, we may see that real
progress has been made in the comic grasp and manipulation of character.
In the comedies of Shakespeare a superficial reader might, so far as
drawing of purely comic characters is concerned, suppose himself to
be moving backwards. The glowing air of romance, the removal of the
scene from the workaday world, the partial abandonment to the moods of
poetry and dream-delight, all this would seem to exclude the setting
up of well-defined figures fitted to entertain the mood of a gay
contemplation. The supposition would not be utterly wrong. The “mixture
of tones,” which comes into the poet’s comedies as well as into his
tragedies, does undoubtedly tend to limit the portrayal of purely
comic traits.[304] The romantic background cannot, like the fixed
arrangements of homely society, throw the follies and perversities
of the figures into sharp relief. Think for a moment how different
æsthetic significance and value {363} would have attached to the
figure of the melancholy Jaques, if it had been encountered, not in the
solitary forest, but in one of Molière’s orderly homes.
The mixture of tones introduces a softening, transforming influence
which affects our attitude towards the queer figures themselves.
Benedick and the other men who are gently brought to reason by
schooling women have in their very perversity something amiable. Even
Malvolio and the other figures, whose folly is exposed with something
of the unsparing extravagance of an older comedy, catch a saving
ray from the warm glow which is diffused over their world. We laugh
heartily; yet the pre-dominant sentiment of the play moves us at the
same time towards tender condonation.
Must we then say that because he rarely allows us to look on folly and
vice in the pure attitude of amused observation, Shakespeare is no
comic poet? It does not greatly matter how we answer the question so
long as we reflect that in the world he has here created for us, at
once beautiful and touched with a tender melancholy, and yet charged
with the electric current of mirth, we possess something quite as
delightful as the well-defined comic scenes of a Molière. Now and
again, moreover, where the rosy warmth of romance gives place to the
colder light of realities, as in “The Merry Wives” and “The Taming of
the Shrew,” we see how keen an eye our poet could turn to the comic
possibilities of character. Nor must we forget how great a contribution
he made to comic character-drawing in his dialogue, where the man and
the woman, at once attracted and repelled, use their witty tongues with
excellent effect, and where woman, though now and then chastised, has
a large part assigned her in curing man of his follies and developing
what is best in him. {364}
For the comedy of character, in its highest and purest form, we are
told, and rightly told, to go to Molière. In his world, not only is the
uproarious, dust-raising mirth of classic comedy silenced, but the fun
of extravagant plot with its disguises and errors, though not absent,
is kept within measure. It is the familiar domestic world, into which
we can readily transport ourselves. It is peopled for the most part
with the sober and sensible. Upon this orderly scene is brought one or
more of the great typical representatives of human folly. In some cases
it is an old entertaining figure revived, the exacting and anxious
miser, for example, or the voluble braggart. But the comic idea also
incarnates itself in a rich variety of new forms, such as the _faux
dévot_ and his victim, the critic of society who turns a sour face on
its conventions, the wrong-headed educator of woman, the ready-tongued
quack, the crazy pedant and the others.
Nor is the enlargement of the gallery of portraits the only or the
chief advance in the comedy of Molière. The fineness of the drawing
is what fixes the eye. All trace of the old rigid abstractions has
disappeared. Typical they all remain, as is their function: yet they
are individualised in a way that satisfies all the conditions of the
art.[305]
Molière’s supremacy in the comic use of character is seen, first of
all, in the selection of his types, which have each a large amusing
aspect inherent in the character itself, and capable of being set
forth in a sufficient variety of manifestation. We see this at once by
comparing his best-known characters with those of his predecessors. In
Molière we have, what Coleridge tells us is wanting in Ben Jonson, the
presentation of the laughable defect as “a prominence {365} growing
out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in
it”.[306] The simple-minded ambition of the Bourgeois gentilhomme,
the pious over-confidence of Orgon, the intractable misanthropy of
Alceste—these, as traits broad-based in the character, offer large
possibilities of comic development.
The next point to be noted in this new art is the mode of presentation
of the character which is to hold the eye in amused contemplation. The
pointing effect of contrast is present, as in all good art; what is
noteworthy is the admirable simplicity of the method of contrasting.
This is rendered possible by the type selected and the point of view
adopted. To Molière, the man taken with vain conceit, the opinionated
prig, the unsociable critic of society and the rest, are aberrations
from a normal type, the socially adapted person. The Harpagons, the
Orgons, the Arnolphes, the Alcestes, the Sganarelles and the others,
have their amusing lop-sidedness, their characteristic tendency swollen
to the ridiculous proportions of a tumor, defined from the first by the
antithesis in which they are set to the normal members of society. The
orderly world, pleading for a reasonable accommodation to the usages of
men, is sometimes represented by the judicious friend, _e.g._, Alceste,
Arnolphe; not seldom by the wife, _e.g._, Madame Jourdain; at other
times by the brother, _e.g._, of Sganarelle; and, now and again, even
by the privileged and saucy maid, _e.g._, of Orgon, of M. Jourdain.
In this juxtaposition the comic poet exhibits clearly enough the
anti-social tendency of the inflated characteristic. The outrage
to woman in the rigorous treatment of their wards by Arnolphe and
Sganarelle, the harshness of Alceste’s demands on the high-spirited
girl he woos, {366} the menace in Jourdain’s craze to the stability
of the home, the cruel bearing of Harpagon’s avarice on his son—all
this is made quite plain to the spectator; and the exposure of this
maleficent tendency in the perverse attitude serves somehow to
strengthen the comic effect.
In thus presentating the hypertrophy of a moral tendency, Molière
gives movement to the embodiment by disclosing the organic action of
the disordered part on other parts of the man. The avarice of Harpagon
renders him fearful of a theft, as if this would ruin him. He takes it
as an insult that he should be called rich, asserting that “nothing
is more false”. This points to that effect of perverted passion which
Molière everywhere emphasises, intellectual blindness, the result
of a mastery of the mind by compulsory ideas (_idées fixes_). The
often-quoted indication of mental deafness in Orgon, when, to the
servant’s announcement that his wife is ill, he dreamily iterates the
ejaculations “Et Tartuffe?” and “Le pauvre homme!” illustrates the full
comic value of such a detachment of mind from the realities which are
seen by others to be rapping at the doors of sense.
This state of the intelligence reduced to something resembling
“mono-ideism” carries with it a loss of the normally clear
self-consciousness. The foolish Arnolphe, who, in order to guard
himself against the risk of a faithless spouse, subjects the girl he
means to wed to intolerable restraints, has the delusion that he is a
great reformer, striking the hyper-pedagogic note when he says that a
woman’s mind is soft wax.[307] Here and elsewhere the spectator is made
to see that the queer creature is acting like a somnambulist, quite
unaware of the consequences of his actions. It thus {367} becomes an
exhibition of human folly, and of the droll obliquity and bombastic
extravagance which are folly’s inseparable concomitants.
There is, no doubt, somewhat of abstraction here. To give a tendency
complete dominance and to reduce intelligence to the menial position of
its servant is to destroy the organic complexity of the man. All the
same, this method of uncovering the drollness of moral obliquity is not
adequately judged when it is called abstract. The simplified mechanism
still lives, in a sense. One might say that the mature mind is reduced
to the level of the child’s. There is, indeed, something suggestive
of the child in a lull of naughty temper in Harpagon’s inquiry of his
coachman, what people are saying about him. A still more striking
approach to the childish occurs when M. Jourdain shows off to his wife
and his maid his newly acquired superiority through the discovery of
the meaning of “prose”.
It may be added that an escape from the rigidity of the abstract is
secured by the development of the obliquity itself. As long as things
are seen to grow, they are taken to be alive. The expansion of the
ridiculous ambition of M. Jourdain endows him with a certain plenitude
of life. It may all be very one-sided, and, by comparison with the life
of a normal man, remind us of the inflexibility of a machine; yet it is
still a deranged organism that acts, and not a mechanism.[308]
It is to be noted, too, that though they resemble distinctly morbid
aberrations from the normal pattern, these characters do not reach to
the full height of mania. M. Jourdain, no doubt, gets near the boundary
that separates sanity from {368} insanity in the closing scenes of the
play;[309] but the comic intention is careful to keep the droll figure
on the right side of the boundary.
A frequent termination of the action in this comedy is a climax,
in which the folly of the comic character rises to an outburst so
voluminous and torrent-like as to throw the onlookers in his world into
uproarious mirth. The final befooling of M. Jourdain is an example.
Molière was too good an artist, and too wise a man, to try in every
case to compass the end of “poetic justice” by giving to society in
its struggle with a mighty and obstinate perversion of humanity more
of a victory than the laugh. Unhappy Alceste has to rush into the
desert without his Célimène amid the hilarity of onlookers. Arnolphe
and Sganarelle are no doubt found out and disappointed; and Tartuffe is
unmasked and gets into trouble. Yet there is no evidence of a general
intention to punish. Orgon, though he is cured of his pious delusion
by a rough surgical operation, receives no more chastisement than M.
Jourdain receives for having brought alien interests and an alien
master into the home. Nor does even that embodiment of an ugly vice,
Harpagon, get anything worthy of being called a trouncing.
In all this, the master shows us how well he knew how to keep at the
point of view which he had selected as the comic. Let us try to define
this after our study of his plays.
When we contrast the world, quiet and orderly for the most part,
presented in these comedies with the hurly-burly scenes of a play of
Aristophanes, we are tempted to say, as has been said, that Molière
sets before our eyes the realities of everyday life. Yet the comic
figures blown out into {369} ridiculous volume are certainly not taken
straight out of our familiar world. They are always transformations,
to this extent, that they are the simplified embodiments of fully
developed tendencies which only show themselves in germ-form, and
complicated more or less by balancing tendencies, in the real world
which is said to be imaged here. We seem thus to have an element of the
unreal thrown against a background of the real.
There is no anomaly here when once we get at the comic point of view.
In Molière’s plays, the source of laughter lies in this very intrusion
of the ill-shapen into a community of well-rounded forms. It is the
intruder on whom we fix the eye, for whose unpredictable antics in a
world for which he is not made our expectation is set. The serious
background is there, but does not take a strong hold of our minds: we
are not greatly moved, for example, by the spectacle of the sufferings
of the daughters and the wards of testy old gentlemen, or even of the
wearing housewifely anxieties of Madame Jourdain. The proper world,
into which the absurdly ill-fitted is here pitchforked, is but a
background, rendering the valuable service of backgrounds by throwing
into relief and so sharply defining the form for which the spectator’s
eye is accommodated.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the whole plot of one of these
comedies consists in the showing up of the grotesque unsuitability
of the comic character to its environment. It groups its persons and
arranges its scenes as if with the intention of demonstrating the
futility of the attempt of this droll figure, lop-sided, and of an
awkward gait, to move about in our ordered world. This helps us to
understand why Molière, though, as observed above, he now and again
resorts to older and more elemental sources of mirth, is able to be
so economical in the use of disguise {370} of improbable encounters,
and of the other mechanical devices of the entertaining show. The
situations themselves as well as the action seem to arise out of the
fundamental facts, the given characters and their relations. Thus,
one is hardly surprised to find Harpagon in the ignoble part of a
money-lender, to whom the son he has pinched betakes himself.
The enjoyment of the comedy here provided presupposes a trained
faculty. There must be the quick observant eye that catches in
side-glance all the relations, and yet remains accommodated for the
laughable. There is no place for a mixed tone, for a blend of laughter
with melancholy sentiment. The serious is envisaged less as the
serious, than as the framework within which the comic figure moves.
The mood is one of a purely gay observation, which has no room for
pity, indignation, or any other emotion; which is brightly and coldly
intellectual; which is content with just looking and being amused.
For a right understanding of the scope of laughter in comedy, we need
to glance at another of its developments. In the so-called “Comedy of
Manners,” as illustrated in the English plays of the Restoration, we
have undoubtedly to do with a very special trend of the comic spirit.
In the art of Molière we have for the most part the presentation of an
individual grotesquely transformed from the common social type which
surrounds him. It is only in a few comedies, as _Les Femmes savantes_
and _Les Précieuses ridicules_, that we have spread out for mirthful
contemplation the characteristics of _a set_ of persons. In these, the
moderate sensible world, against which the cultivation of “the fine
shades” looks so entertaining, is still indicated, though, of course,
less immediately and fully.
In the plays of Congreve and his contemporaries, we meet {371} with
a comic treatment of more widespread “manners” of the hour. The
sources of their fun are pretty obvious. There is something of the
utter abandonment to disorder and revelry which we met with in the
works of Aristophanes.[310] The ordered world, with its interaction
of normal characters, seems blotted out of existence. The plot is, as
with Plautus, a love-intrigue, and has much of the coarseness and the
degradation of situation which mark the popular Latin comedy. Yet it is
at least marked off by the feature that it frees men from the sordid
business of sending menials to bid for the prize, and sets them face
to face with the women they are bent on obtaining. The women, again,
are not shy maids, but range from experienced wives to the would-be
simpletons fresh from the country. They are, moreover, while saucy
and disposed to make good show of resistance, untrammelled by any
sentimental or other attachment to their chains.
It seems undeniable that this “artificial” comedy can make good its
claims to be entertaining. It has vivacity and stirring movement, the
full frolicsomeness of the practical joke, and it abounds in scenes
of voluminous gaiety. Its dialogue at its best has, along with its
coarseness, an unmistakable brilliance of wit.
But how are we to define the point of view where there is no ordered
world as background? There seems no question here of laughing at the
affectations of a few, who are viewed as comic aberrations from a
reasonable type. The whole world is affected with frolicsome disorder.
We are not now concerned with the mental attitude of the spectators
for whom these comedies were written. {372} To them, no doubt, the
spectacle was a merry one as bringing a sense of relief from the gloom
of the Puritan’s reign. It may, as Taine suggests, have been served up
as a kind of “Appetitsbischen” between meals, in order to stimulate
the palates of the gallants who frequented the theatre; though it is
difficult to attribute this function to what by common consent was
intended to provoke mirthful laughter. What is of more importance is to
get at the point of view of Charles Lamb and others who avow that they
find a true comedy here.
Lamb himself has told us what attitude a man should bring to the
appreciation of this comedy. He is to regard these “sports of a witty
fancy” as “a world of themselves almost as much as fairyland”. His
moral feelings are left at home with his morning suit. He goes to
the play in order “to escape from the pressure of reality”. For him
the figures that pursue one another across the stage have no moral
substance, and are proper subjects neither for approval nor for
disapproval. In other words, Lamb tells us that the comedy of Congreve
and his school is to be taken as a pure show, holding no relations to
the real, everyday world.
This view has been spurned by Macaulay, in a well-known Essay, as
subversive of morals. To him, the comedy of the Restoration is a thing
that is inherently anti-moral in spirit and intention; and he proceeds
to pound it with weighty invectives.
The argument would have been relevant if the question had been a
practical one of this kind: shall we put this comedy on the stage
to-day for our boys and girls to see it? As against Lamb’s plea it
seems to me to be a curious case of missing the point. When, for
example, Macaulay complains that in these comedies the husbands are
treated {373} as objects of contempt and aversion, whereas the
gallants are decked out with all the graces, he might have remembered
the old _Contes_ and bethought him that this was an elementary
condition of the artificial world, which is created solely for
amusement. His answer to Lamb, that recollections of morality do steal
now and then into this fantastic world, does not touch the latter’s
main contention, and only shows (so far as it is just) that the
creators were not perfect architects, and tried to combine incompatible
styles. The moral order is still in the background, dimly perceived,
even here: the fun of the thing is at bottom, as Lamb says, a sense of
momentary escape from rules which we know cannot be set aside in the
real world. But this idea of an escape implies that what we fly from
must not be dragged into the show.
Our study of comedy and of the sources of laughter has prepared us
to accept Lamb’s view. The comic spectacle appeals to the man in the
play-mood. When there, he may see the fun of the turbulent world of
Aristophanes and not be troubled by the thought of the undesirability
of its realisation. Even when he is entertained by a play of Molière
he does not take the background quite seriously, waxing indignant,
say, in sympathy with Harpagon’s ill-used son, or with M. Jourdain’s
ill-used wife. The least swerving from the point of view of comedy, a
turn of the mental “eye-glass,” would spoil all. He would begin, with
Rousseau, to protest against presenting so good a man as Alceste in a
ludicrous light. The Restoration comedy appeals to the same playful
mood simplified by the temporary inhibition of all outside tendencies.
It is, I conceive, a profound error to suppose that either the writer
of a comedy or his audience is at the moral point of view, envisaging
behaviour as morally {374} commendable or the opposite. Possibly, the
influence of the didactic morality on early modern comedy may have
helped to foster this error. It is true that Molière finds his comic
material in certain defects of character. Yet the selections made by
comic art are not determined by degrees of moral turpitude. As hinted
above, very small and comparatively harmless vices may be preferred
as having the drollest look on the stage.[311] Vanity, the richest of
all moral blemishes in its comic possibilities, and therefore greatly
employed by comedy, both ancient and modern, is not judged as heinously
immoral, like hatred and cruelty, for example.[312] This may suffice to
show how wide an interval separates the point of view of the spectator
of a comedy from that of the moral judge.
It seems to me to be much more correct to say, with M. Bergson, that
comedy takes up the social rather than the moral point of view. By
this I mean that the comic poet is thinking of the look of things to
the trained apperceptive organ of the social kind of person, according
as they appear to be well or ill adapted to the common practices
and opinions of society as discerned and interpreted by its more
intelligent representatives. Yet, in speaking of the social point
of view, I must not be taken to mean that either the author or the
spectator of the comic scene is seriously judging of the behaviour of
its figures by a reference to social values. There is, undoubtedly, an
approach to this, not only in the early modern comedy, but in the later
serious variety, including some plays of Molière; but the art-impulse
of the writer, where it is clear, prevents the approximation {375} of
points of view from becoming a loss of distinctness. Comedy addresses
itself to a mood of æsthetic contemplation which, though it has room
for keen penetration, and even for a dim discernment of a serious
import in the background of the puppet show, remains on the whole a
playful attitude. The spectator is agreeably occupied with the look of
things; and such social consciousness as is awake in him serves merely
to give to his perceptions a precise measure of the seemly, or at most
to enable him to glimpse something of a sharply corrective expression
in the puckered visage of the comic showman.[313]
In comedy, the moral comes into view as “mores,” as a part, and a
principal part, of the customary, as we have it in a civilised society.
Yet it is not disengaged and held up as moral. Molière, the Comedian
of Society _par excellence_, shows us clearly enough that he is not
trying to distinguish the more permanent and universal basis of society
in morality from the variable accidents which enter into the manners
of a particular society at a given date. The “gushing” mode of accost
adopted by mere acquaintances which irritates Alceste is accepted by
the poet as a standard of the fitting, just because as a fashion it is
a social institution, to be good-naturedly accepted by the social kind
of person. When M. Jourdain tries to step out of his bourgeois rank,
the laughter he provokes depends primarily on the unseemliness of his
ambition. Yet, at the end of the nineteenth century in Paris or London,
such ambition is so common and meets with so large a success that
we have almost forgotten to smile at it. Hence, when Taine talks of
Molière as a “philosopher” illustrating “universal truths,” he commits
an error which may be pardoned, as due to the natural inclination to
stretch the achievement of a great {376} compatriot.[314] What Molière
does is to secure for the rather oddly formed group of customs and
practices adopted by the particular society he is depicting, adequate
exponents, who, in their advocacy of the social system against the
socially perverse, not only disengage and give clearness to the
unwritten laws, but may—so long as they do not raise the question of
their deeper grounds—seek to recommend them by the most enlightened
presentment of the common-sense attitude.
Now, in substituting the social for the moral point of view, the
writer of comedy necessarily tends to slacken the cords that bind us
in society. Nothing comes out more plainly in Molière’s plays than the
good-natured accommodation of social requirements to human infirmities.
The author distinctly rejects the idea of going above this standard, of
trying to improve on social customs—for example, in the comic treatment
of Alceste and of Arnolphe. At heart, like his Roman predecessors, he
takes sides with indulgence against all irksome restraint. He has the
large tolerance, the readiness to excuse and to pass by, of the easy
man of the world. Célimène’s coquetries, for example, are accepted as
natural in one who “is twenty years old”. So it must be; for comedy is
written to put us into an easy frame of mind, in which we are perfectly
content with the world as it is.
From this point of view, we may see that the comedy of manners is
not, fundamentally, so different from that of character as is often
maintained. It breaks with the moral order of stable societies, no
doubt, and turns its back rather rudely on this order. Yet it may
still, in a sense, be said to adopt the social point of view. That is
to say, it envisages {377} the seemly as that which falls in with
the code of manners which happens to obtain at the time. Its standard
of fitness is, like that of the savage and of Molière, the customs of
the tribe. It is the sour-tempered and suspicious husband, for whom
Macaulay expresses so droll a concern, who in this inverted world
becomes the anti-social kind of person. The large indulgence of this
society is but an expansion of the indulgence common to Terence and to
Molière. A sub-conscious awareness of the topsy-turvyness of things is
with us as we look; and the quaint fancifulness of the inversion—if
only like Lamb we can refuse for a moment to take serious views—is
distinctly refreshing.
In saying that we go to meet comedy in the play-mood, in which our
habits of moral approbation and disapprobation, and even of estimation
of social values, are lulled to a sleep more or less profound, it is
not meant that these serious tendencies in us can be ignored by the
writer of comedy. As implied above, they mould our forms of the seemly,
unknowingly to us perhaps, even as we look. And more, though inhibited
by the play-like mood, they have force; and should the showman go too
far, say in the direction of stripping off the veil of decency, they
may wake up and make an end of the comic enjoyment. Just as tragic
fear and pity may give way to physical revulsion when horror obtrudes
itself, so when in comedy the unclean thrusts into view its ugly head,
a sort of physical revulsion may silence laughter. The latitude in
these matters conceded from time to time to comic art will, it is
evident, vary greatly with the particular ratio between the vigours of
the mirthful and moral tendencies.
The presentation of the comic aspects of men’s behaviour on the stage
is narrowly limited. As Sainte-Beuve reminds us, a whole people may
have a fit (_accès_) of mania. If {378} this happen to be the war-fury
we shall have given us, as pointed out above, unmistakable elements of
comic situation and character. Indeed, if a person who has just been
in the midst of a wild “Jingoism” without losing his head will read
Molière’s plays he will not fail to be struck by numerous resemblances.
And here, as in comedy, the figures have their comical contours and
poses thrown into relief by a social background, as much superior to
any single community at a particular moment, as a community to one
of its members. Yet no national comedy could in these days follow
Aristophanes and use such promising material, nor are we likely as yet
to have a comedy for the civilised world.
Before leaving comedy, we may glance at other forms of literature
which seem to approach its point of view. Of certain kinds of the
so-called serious comedy of recent times I do not propose to speak. It
seems more important to remark that prose fiction may now and again
draw near the comic point of view. It sometimes presents us with a
texture of fantastic situations and adventures which reminds us of
the Aristophanean burlesque, as in the “Tartarin” series of Alphonse
Daudet. This type of fiction gives us elemental laughter, uncomplicated
by anything in the nature of sad reflection—though a little of the
tenderness of humour may steal in. Or the tone of the story may
approach that of the more sedate comedy, making, indeed, the one hardly
distinguishable from the other, save through the narrative form. This
holds good, for example, of the novels of Miss Austen. The social
point of view is sharply defined and steadily adhered to, and critical
reflection is confined to the _rôle_ of giving a fuller and more lucid
interpretation of the standards of the society illustrated.
The comic point of view may intrude, too, and tend to become supreme
in fiction which has something of the {379} deeper and more thrilling
import. It seems to have been present, at times at least, to Balzac,
and to Thackeray. But it is in Mr. Meredith’s novels that we may study
a new and a finer employment of the comic attitude in connection with
the more enthralling kind of interest. The very subjects—for example,
the egoist entangled in the situation which makes large demands
for consideration; the father with a pedagogic system of his own
concoction; the tailor more successful in soaring than his client M.
Jourdain, with certain consequences to his family; the gallant cadet of
an ancient house affected with the zeal of radicalism—these sound like
the titles of comedy. And though the writer may allow the reedy tone
of humour to be heard now and again he gives prominence to the fluty
note of comedy, with its simplicity and clearness, and something of its
sound of sharp correction, too. Occasionally indeed, as in _Beauchamp’s
Career_, this characteristic note will be distinctly heard at the end
of a story which closes on a tragic disaster.
Yet a closer inspection will show that though the point of view of
these writers may approximate to that of the comic poet, it remains
distinct. This distinctness, moreover, is not due merely to the
presence of a large serious interest which gives gravity to the story.
It arises out of the circumstance that the writer of prose fiction, by
addressing himself to the reflective mood of a solitary reader, and not
to the apperceptive attitude of a spectator, will, even in presenting
the comic aspects of his subject, unavoidably tend to transcend the
standards of fitness adopted by a particular community, substituting
for these the ideal standards of a community of the wise and good.
In comedy we have the appeal to laughter in its purity, the child’s
laughter at the funny show guided by an intelligent grasp of social
customs. It addresses itself to the {380} many, united by common modes
of judgment and a common standard of fitness. Literature gives us,
however, appeals of another kind. The writer who amuses us may seem,
at least, to be very far from the social point of view, and the mood
he induces may be by no means that of pure gaiety. After what has been
said in the preceding chapter, a few words must suffice to indicate
these other literary expressions of the laughing spirit.
We may distinguish two main varieties of this mixed tone: (_a_) the
combination of laughter with the attitude of serious attack, as
illustrated in satire; (_b_) its combination with mellowing feelings in
what we have recognised as modern humour.
The distinguishing note of satire is the angry one of reprobation. Here
vices and follies are no longer set before us as a diverting spectacle,
but emphasis is laid on their moral indignity. The satirist is at the
point of view of the moral judge; only, instead of the calmness of the
judge, he has something of the fierce attitude of the prosecutor who
aims at exposing and denouncing the turpitude of an offence.
This being so, we see that laughter enters into satire as an expression
of contempt and as an instrument of punishment. It assumes its most
pungent and most dreaded form, ridicule or derision. It is thus less a
spontaneous feeling than a volitional process: the satirist wills to
mock. As satirist he controls his personal indignation by an artistic
purpose, such a presentment of his victim as will excite in his hearers
or readers the full laughter of contempt. Hence, the large license he
takes, in the employment of exaggeration and the devices of caricature,
in the invention of degrading situations, and in the appropriation of
humiliating comparison, figure of speech and the other resources of his
art. {381}
It is clear that the mirthful spirit when it thus lends itself to
the purpose of damaging attack becomes modified to the point of
transformation. To laugh with Juvenal or with Swift is to feel more
of a bitter malignity than of gaiety. We may say that satire takes us
back to the brutal laughter of the savage standing jubilant over his
prostrate foe. Or we may describe the laughter as a feeling of “sudden
glory” deeply tinged by the dominant angry attitude of the laugher.
Yet the intrusion of laughter into invective, just because it is the
solvent of all serious moods, tends, as we have seen, to develop, if
only for an instant, a lighter tone. Hence the gamut of dissimilar
tones in satire, which at the one end is furiously denunciatory, at the
other almost playful and good-temperedly jocular. The early popular
“farce” of the Greeks, with its mocking and ironical speeches, and the
satirical songs of the Middle Ages were apparently pieces of rollicking
fun, like the comedy of Aristophanes, in which the satirical note was
half-drowned in buffoonish laughter. Where, however, the composition is
palpably a satire, the serious purpose may be seen to dominate and to
colour the whole expression.
The characteristics of satire, thus roughly indicated, hold good alike
whether the vices exposed be those of an individual, of a social class,
of a society at a particular moment, or of mankind as a whole. In any
case, the point of view is clearly that of a supposed moral judge and
sentencer.
The presence of a purpose of serious exposure is not by any means
equally clear in all cases; whence the denotation of the term satire
is not sharply bounded. Comedy itself has been said to have a strong
satirical element, and this seems certainly true of the compositions
of Aristophanes, which, as Bergk remarks, contain in their mixture of
tones {382} a “biting scorn” and a “bitter irony”.[315] Romances, as
pictures of men and their manners, are often described as satirical,
presumably because a free delineation of human vices is taken to imply
the condemnatory attitude and the intention to castigate. Yet here the
castigation may be of the mildest, as in _Gil Blas_, which, according
to Sainte-Beuve, does not hold up men in the mass to ridicule as wicked
and foolish, but rather exposes their meanness and dulness.[316] M.
Taine finds the satirist’s lash laid on heavily in the English school
of fiction, even in the writings of Thackeray.[317] Yet judgments as
to a writer’s intention based on the prevailing tone of the world he
portrays are apt to seem subjective and capricious.
Satire proper, where the purpose of ridicule is confessed, is a
very different thing. We see this in the works of Juvenal, of whom
Prof. Tyrrell writes, “He is always in a rage and a laugh seems to
sit strangely on his lips”.[318] In this more serious and poignant
satire the laugh takes on a shrill note of malignity from its mental
_entourage_. The virulence of the satire of antiquity has since been
softened. This is frequently effected by allegorical disguise. The
mediæval satires, such as that on cunning and treachery in the fable
of the Fox, are examples. The satires of Voltaire and of the English
satirists, including the bitter and unsparing Swift, illustrate the
same tendency.
This throwing of a fierce attack, whether political or moral, into
the form of an allegory, though it seems to veil the direction of the
assault, really gives it more point. In the attacks of derision, at
least, a back-handed blow may often hurt more than one straight from
the shoulder. The reader’s satisfaction includes no doubt an {383}
element of admiration for the finesse of art: yet more seems to be
involved. Swift could not have shown us the absurdities in our social
and political institutions half as well by any direct attack on them
as he has shown us by the indirect attack in _Gulliver’s Travels_. The
indignity of a familiar vice or folly seems to be made palpable when
it is thus ridiculed under the guise of some new semblance. Further,
our laughter at the vice is reinforced by that which comes from the
detection of the make-believe of the allegory. The playful element
probably takes on something of malice from the prevailing tone of the
satire, and in the end we may laugh yet more cruelly at the victim who
is ever being anew detected, so to speak, under the literary mask.
Much the same kind of remark applies to the effect of simile, innuendo,
irony, and all that we mean by wit in satire. We have touched on
the playful side of wit under the head of Comedy. But this is only
a part of what the word commonly implies. Even in comic dialogue
there is something of attack, and the witty women of the Restoration
and other writers have now and again a rasping tongue. Yet it is in
satire that we see the deep malignity of wit. The witty sarcasms of
Voltaire and the rest seem to be imps of malice disguised as toys.
The sally of cruel meaning out of what looks harmless nonsense, or a
mere verbal slip—as in the polished rebuke of a Master of Trinity to a
too confident Junior Fellow, “we are all fallible, even the youngest
of us”—has a wounding force greater than that of a direct mode of
statement. The effect is still greater where failure and disgrace are
exhibited under a thin ironical veil of glorious achievement, as in
Pope’s lines on the Lord Mayor’s Show—said by Leigh Hunt to be the
finest piece of wit he knew:— {384}
Now night descending the proud scene is o’er,
But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more.
In all such ironical inversion the satirist manages by a suggestion
of the worthy and honourable to drive home with added force the
humiliating truth; as in the remark of Cicero, apropos of an elderly
dame who said that she was but forty years old: “I must believe her,
for I have heard her say so any time these ten years”.[319] The
presentation in this case of something hidden, immediately followed by
an uncovering, may evoke an echo of the “bo-peep” laugh of infancy,
which should, one supposes, tend to introduce a milder and playful tone
into the attack; yet, owing to the predominance of the attitude of
fierce derision, this very element of playfulness appears, somehow, to
give a new pungency to the satirical thrust.
Nothing could be more unlike the laughter of virulent satire than
that provoked by the expression of humour in literature. As our
analysis would lead us to expect, we find in the truly humorous writer
the mellowing influences of good nature and sympathy, and a large
understanding and acceptance of that against which he pokes fun. While
satire, sarcasm and their kind seem to be trying to push things away,
or at least to alter them, humour, curiously enough, looks as if it
were tenderly holding to the world which entertains it. Yet while all
humorous writings illustrate these tendencies, the subjective and
personal quality of humour is seen in the circumstance that every
writer brings to bear on what he sees a new temper and attitude.
The contrast of the satirical and the humorous point of view
may be conveniently studied by glancing at the current {385} and
much-discussed distinction between wit and humour. That these do not
logically make a pair of contrasting species has been implied in our
analysis of the two. Perhaps nowhere do we find the human mind to
have been more strangely misled by the fact of the existence of two
words than in this case. Wit, as essentially a manner of deportment
of the intelligence, can stand in no simple and direct relation to an
emotional mood like humour.
No doubt there are facts which give colour to the idea of an opposition
in this case. Thus, it is indubitable that whereas humour specially
favours certain kinds of imaginative and reflective activity, wit
seems always to prefer, even in its play, something in the shape of an
incisive logical process.[320] But I suspect that the deeper ground of
the distinction is to be found in the circumstance that the wit which
is most brilliant, of keenest edge, and most effective in its stroke,
appears always to grow out of, and so becomes associated with, those
moods of satire and mordant mockery, to which humour as good-natured
and tolerant is directly opposed. So it is with the wit of Voltaire and
of others of his century.
A closer examination will, however, show that there is nothing
incompatible between the humorous sentiment and the witty mode of
behaviour of the intellect. As play indeed, wit quite naturally allies
itself to the attitude of humour. It will be found that much that is
commonly described as wit discloses the softening effect of humour, and
might, indeed, just as well be called an illustration of humour. Those
who really know the Irish will sometimes hesitate whether to speak of
their wit or of their humour. The same applies, I feel sure, to a large
number of {386} Shakespeare’s “witticisms”.[321] In all such cases,
the wit, which when set in the fierce mood of the satirist has a nasty
sting, not only becomes harmless, but may take on something of positive
kindliness when it is tempered by an infusion of genial humour. The
remark apropos of a very correct person, “He has not one redeeming
vice,” may illustrate the point. It may even, in this harmless
form, come into a laugh which tells against the humorist, as in the
observation of an idler, “I don’t like working between my meals”.[322]
Yet though in their well-marked forms thus dissimilar, the satirical
and the humorous mood may shade one into the other in a way that makes
it difficult to draw the boundary line. Heine, in some of his writings,
_e.g._, the poem _Deutschland_, tempers his mockery with sentiment
and humour in such a way that one finds it hard to think of it as a
satire. In places, indeed, this genius, so simple-looking yet really
so profound, seems to become a consummate humorist, bringing out with
a single touch all the laughter and all the tears of things. Was Lewis
Carroll a satirist when he threw behind the fun of his children’s
stories some deeper meaning which for ever eludes us? or was this
semblance of a meaning a part of his fun, his playful way of punishing
the “grown up” for reading a child’s book? {387}
In modern literature, the interesting point to note is the growing
interpenetration of the laughing and the serious attitude, and the
coalescence of the mirthful spirit with sentiment. The two processes,
though distinct, may run on together, as we may see in Shakespeare’s
plays. The humorous element introduced by the fool in “Lear” and
elsewhere at once relieves the tragic tension, and gives a moment’s
play to that disposition towards a lighter laughing criticism which is
always active when we survey colossal folly, even though the mental eye
is at the moment focussed for its catastrophic effects. The laughter
is controlled and kept tenderly humorous and half-sad by a large
reflection, which does not lose sight, even at the relieving moment, of
the lamentable ruin. It is only another way of combining the “fun” and
the “pity” of it when the master brings a genial humour into comedy and
makes us, with his faithful follower Bardolph, half-love and more than
half-pity the faulty knight who so merrily entertains us.
As we have seen, prose-fiction may illustrate the comic spirit and
something of the fiercer temper of satire. Yet laughter comes into
it in another form. It has to accommodate itself to the presence of
serious interests, and of a plot which involves sympathetic fear and
strain. Hence it appears in stories which have a mixed tone, as it does
indeed in comedy when this is not pure—for example, “heroic comedy,” as
illustrated by M. Rostand’s _Cyrano_—in the guise of humour. That is to
say, its gay treble note is complicated by an undertone, a resonance of
the sadness of its _milieu_. One needs only to think how one laughs at
Moses and his purchase of spectacles in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, or at
the disfigurement of the hero in _Cyrano_.
A novel may, of course, present the grave and the gay in mere
juxtaposition, so that the interaction and {388} modification here
spoken of are only very imperfectly realised. The notion of a good
story entertained by many is of one that bears the imagination of
the reader swiftly through a series of diverse scenes, now grave
and pathetic, now gay and mirthful. A large part of modern fiction
satisfies this need. Stories of wild adventure from _Gil Blas_ to _Tom
Jones_ are “humorous” to the multitude in this sense. Even in the case
of a real humorist like Dickens, whose amusing figures are there to
touch the heart as well as to entertain the imagination, the perfect
harmonising of tones may sometimes seem to be wanting. A humorist of
another complexion, Laurence Sterne, seems to have missed the judicious
mixture of laughter and sentiment in his _Sentimental Journey_.[323]
The art of humorous writing consists in part in selecting characters,
incidents and the rest in such a way as to exhibit the intimate
connections between that which amuses and that which touches the
serious sentiments, respect and pity; and to develop the reflective
consciousness which sustains the mood of humour. Goldsmith’s history
of the Vicar and his family is one of the best examples. Scott’s
Antiquary and Fielding’s Parson Adams are characters which at once
entertain and win us. Such humorous types involve, as Leigh Hunt has
pointed out, a striking contrast within the characters, _e.g._, the
gullible and the manly in Parson Adams;[324] and the sharpness of this
contrast turns on that of the feelings excited by the constituents.
The characters selected by humorous fiction may be consciously
amusing, after the manner of the Merry Knight, or wholly unconscious
of their laughter-provoking power. A valuable part of this amusing
portraiture consists in bringing out {389} the fresh and odd-looking
characteristics not only of individuals, but of classes and even of
races.
In addition to this objective presentation of the humorous aspects
of character and its relations, the writer may further the effect
by striking now and again undertones of quaint reflection and so
introducing an element of subjective humour. The notion that such
reflection is out of place in narrative art seems strange to a student
of the history of literature. If there was room for the comments of the
onlooking chorus in Greek drama, and for the yet deeper reflections
supplied by the acting onlookers in Shakespeare’s plays, there should
be room for it in a prose narrative. In truth, some of the best writers
of fiction, Fielding, Thackeray and George Eliot among others, make
excellent use of this reflective accompaniment. In the best works of
the last-named writer we have something of Shakespeare’s art of adding
a pregnant observation which, so far from disturbing, rather furthers
the mood needed for a due appreciation of the action.
In the great humorous writings, those of Rabelais, Cervantes
and—removed by an interval no doubt—Sterne, we appear to find presented
a largeness of subject and of treatment which makes direct appeal as
much to reflection as to perception. You must know the Middle Ages,
which are being laughingly kicked aside, before you will even care for
Gargantua; you must envisage Don Quixote and his squire, not as two
individuals or even as two types of character, but as embodiments of
two remote levels of culture, and more, of two opposed ways of looking
at the world, before you will begin to feel all the humour of these
juxtapositions. And so of the great contrast between Mr. Shandy and
his brother, the Captain. There is no need for the interpolation of
reflection: the scale, the breadth {390} of treatment, the wealth
of ideas poured out, these compel us to reflect. The laughter which
comes from the perceptions of the utter incongruity of the mental and
moral structures thus juxtaposed and attached is saturated with this
reflection. And more, so right, so likeable, so estimable even is
each of these contrasting characters, with its well-marked temper and
_manière de voir_, that our sympathies go out towards both. Thus we
leave the perceptual level and the relative point of view of comedy far
behind us, reaching a standpoint near that of the thinker who embraces
all particular points of view, and yet may manage to have his own laugh
in the end. When, as in Jean Paul’s _Siebenkäs_, and yet more clearly
in Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_, the contrast seems to open up the great
collision in human experience between sentiment and prosaic reality,
idealism and the earth-binding instincts of practical life, we stand,
indeed, on the border-line between the humour of fiction and that of
philosophy.
Humour has its place, a respectable one too, in essays and other forms
of literature which deal directly with reality and are products not
so much of imagination as of thought. In these, the contrast between
the serious and the playful appears in transitions from a perfectly
grave to a humorous kind of reflection. Marked differences of tone
are observable here also. The humorous remark may be but a momentary
diversion of the attention, a playful side-glance, in a serious
argument. In some writings, _e.g._, those of Sir Thos. Browne and of
Lamb, the humorous element hardly amounts to a digression, or even to
a momentary interruption, but is fused into and half lost to sight in
the serious argument.[325] Among more recent writers, too, including
some yet living, we have admirable examples of historical narrative
{391} and criticism lit up here and there with soft glow-worm points
of humour. In other cases, the humorous feature may be so large as to
modify the colour of the whole, as in Miss Kingsley’s _Travels in West
Africa_. An Essay, again, may be as a whole a _jeu d’esprit_ and the
fun seem to preponderate, while the manner is throughout that of grave
argument; or, in more subtle work, as some of Charles Lamb’s, it may
be best described as fun sandwiched in between a look of seriousness
on the surface, and a real seriousness of meaning below. The fusion of
tones leaves much to be desired in the case of many writers who are
popularly regarded as skilled humorists. A mere interruption of serious
thought by a sort of playful “aside” does not prove the existence of
the gift of humour, which is essentially the power of playing on moods
not only dissimilar but usually antagonistic in a way that avoids all
shock and sense of discontinuity.
{392}