Oh, they are funny! The comic lovers' mission in life is to serve as
a sort of "relief" to the misery caused the audience by the other
characters in the play; and all that is wanted now is something that
will be a relief to the comic lovers.
They have nothing to do with the play, but they come on immediately
after anything very sad has happened and make love. This is why we watch
sad scenes on the stage with such patience. We are not eager for them
to be got over. Maybe they are very uninteresting scenes, as well as sad
ones, and they make us yawn; but we have no desire to see them hurried
through. The longer they take the better pleased we are: we know that
when they are finished the comic lovers will come on.
They are always very rude to each other, the comic lovers. Everybody is
more or less rude and insulting to every body else on the stage; they
call it repartee there! We tried the effect of a little stage "repartee"
once upon some people in real life, and we wished we hadn't afterward.
It was too subtle for them. They summoned us before a magistrate for
"using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace." We were
fined 2 pounds and costs!
They are more lenient to "wit and humor" on the stage, and know how
to encourage the art of vituperation. But the comic lovers carry the
practice almost to excess. They are more than rude--they are abusive.
They insult each other from morning to night. What their married life
will be like we shudder to think!
In the various slanging matches and bullyragging competitions which form
their courtship it is always the maiden that is most successful.
Against her merry flow of invective and her girlish wealth of offensive
personalities the insolence and abuse of her boyish adorer cannot stand
for one moment.
To give an idea of how the comic lovers woo, we perhaps cannot do better
than subjoin the following brief example:
_SCENE: Main thoroughfare in populous district of London. Time:
Noon. Not a soul to be seen anywhere._
_Enter comic loveress R., walking in the middle of the road._
_Enter comic lover L., also walking in the middle of the road._
_They neither see the other until they bump against each other in
the center._
HE. Why, Jane! Who'd a' thought o' meeting you here!
SHE. You evidently didn't--stoopid!
HE. Halloo! got out o' bed the wrong side again? I say, Jane, if you go
on like that you'll never get a man to marry you.
SHE. So I thought when I engaged myself to you.
HE. Oh! come, Jane, don't be hard.
SHE. Well, one of us must be hard. You're soft enough.
HE. Yes, I shouldn't want to marry you if I weren't. Ha! ha! ha!