LITERATURE AND THE DRAMA AS CONTRIBUTORIES TO JOCULAR
LITERATURE--DEPENDENCE ON SURROUNDINGS AND CIRCUMSTANCES.
Literature and the Drama have been the most munificent contributors
to our ANA. If the sayings reported of or by actors and authors were
subtracted from the grand total, the residuum would assuredly display
a very deplorable shrinkage; and this is easily capable of explanation
in a manner which itself explains the corrupt form in which much of
this lore has descended to us. For the whole atmosphere of the theatre
is conducive to the suggestion of odd circumstances and situations,
and the professional writer enjoys peculiar facilities, through his
reading and associates, for making himself master of the good sayings
of his own circle and of other times. As Bacon observed, “Reading makes
a full man, and conversation a ready man”; the caterer for the stage
or the booksellers finds that it enters into his business to store his
brain with such _bons-mots_ and pieces of harmless scandal as he picks
up in books or in society; and these are naturally apt to undergo,
before they reach other ears, a polishing operation or the action of
the churn. For, as they came to him, they offended in some particular,
perchance, his artistic eyes, or it seemed good to change the bill.
To this kind of agency, no doubt, is owing the large stock, which
survives in print in most languages, of various readings of stories;
but a second and very different influence, not less potential, has been
concurrently at work in the same direction. From time immemorial the
professional joke-dresser has ranged at will over the whole field, and
kept the market excellently well supplied with goods of this special
description in every variety at the lowest possible figure.
Malone, in his _Recollections_, says of Richardson the artist:
“He was a great news- and anecdote-monger, and in the latter part
of his life spent much of his time in gathering and communicating
intelligence concerning the King of Prussia, and other topics of the
day, as Dr. Burney, who knew him very well, informs me.”
This extract furnishes in some degree the key to the origin of a large
share of the amusing tales, _jeux d’esprits_, and repartees, which
the various extant collections offer to our consideration--that is to
say, to their origin _in a second or third state_, as the printseller
expresses it; and beyond question, if there is any branch of facetious
biography or history which has reached us in an artificial condition,
it is _par excellence_ that which deals with alleged episodes in the
careers of high-born personages, not merely of remote times, but of an
approximate generation or so--nay, even of the great folks with whom we
might touch elbows, _si fas esset_.
If it be the case that “a jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him
that hears it,” it is equally true that a pleasantry depends for its
thorough success on the atmosphere in which it receives utterance, and
on the personality of the narrator. Something which might seem racy and
piquant to an Oriental, would very probably fall flat in an ancient
Greek and Roman gathering; and it demanded all the surrounding costume
of Greece or Rome to give salience and effect to those specimens of
wit, which do not often, as they are recorded, strike us as remarkably
brilliant. It is as if we put old wine into new bottles. The liquor is
there; but the crust and the beeswing have vanished.
So it is with the facetious heritage which comes to us from our own
immediate ancestors. The substance and outline are with us; but the
setting, the context, and the _genius loci_, are too frequently to be
desired; and, besides, an editor has perhaps come upon the ground, and
turned what was rough copy into a sentence or a paragraph “teres atque
rotundus.” It becomes a readable article of sale; but it is a sort of
handiwork, and no longer a spontaneous sally or a faithful report.
On the other hand, it may happen that a jest bears upon some permanent
incidence of human society, and passes with merely verbal changes from
one age, one language, and one country, to another; like the episode
mentioned by Lucian in his _Hetairai_ and likewise by Gellius, of the
lady who, when her admirer sent her a cask of wine, commending its age,
retorted that it was very small for its age,--where we observe that the
conditions, being neither local nor temporary, are capable of universal
and perpetual application.
The reduction of pleasantries and satirical thrusts to form must be
an outcome of topographical, climatic and social conditions, and is
necessarily dependent on habits of life, pronunciation, diet, and
dress--nay, on the most trifling minutiæ connected with national
usages. The happiness of a witticism or of a taunt hangs on its
relationship at some sort of angle to the customs and notions prevalent
in a country. It exists by no other law than its antagonism or contrast
to received institutions and matters of common belief; and hence what
in one part of the world is apt to awaken mirth or resentment, in
another falls flatly on the ear.
The essence and property of a saying lie under very weighty obligations
to local circumstances and colouring. There can be no more familiar
illustration of my meaning to an English reader than the large debt
which an Irish or Scottish piece of humour owes to the Irish or
Scottish brogue. But it has been the same everywhere from all time.
Among the ancient Greeks an Ionian would have found much difficulty
in appreciating the point of an Attic sally, while among the modern
Italians a Tuscan would listen with unmoved countenance to a _jeu
d’esprit_ in the Venetian _patois_. The turn of a syllable, the
inflexion of a vowel, is enough to mar the effect; and a similar
observation holds good of the numberless dialects spoken throughout the
German Fatherland and the Low Countries.
It is comparatively easy to comprehend a joke, when there is a
well-understood acceptation of terms and a community of atmosphere and
costume; but to study these matters at a distance both of time and
place, and to have to allow for altered circumstances or surroundings
is immeasurably more difficult; and this is what I do not think we
always remember that we have to do in estimating the good things of
our own precursors on this soil, and still more those of individuals
governed in all their ways of thinking and acting by considerations
which we can never perfectly bring home to ourselves.
Taking the United States, again, the same expression will be treated in
one part as of obnoxious significance; in another it will perhaps raise
a smile; and in a third it will bear no meaning whatever.
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