The conclusion is that the distinction between the comic and the tragic rests, not on a prejudice but on the very definition of drama; that this distinction may remain absolute without disadvantage; that there are disadvantages on the contrary if it is not observed; that nevertheless it may be disregarded—not without peril however—on this condition, that the disturbing element shall not interfere with the first impression which should remain single, and that it shall even heighten that impression by a slight effect of contrast.
Consider for a moment that we must come down to the middle of the eighteenth century to find in our literature a single comedy in which a situation turns toward the pathetic and is treated in a manner to bring tears to the eyes of the spectators.
There is no doubt that the founders of our drama, and above all the immortal Molière, had made the very simple observation that in life it often happens that the most joyful events face about suddenly and change joy into despair. After a good dinner you embark with some comrades in a boat for a fishing party. Your spirits are a little flusht with wine; somebody is guilty of an imprudence. A single person has preserved his good sense and warns you of the danger you are inviting. You laugh him to ridicule; he himself yields to the general hilarity. A puff of wind catches the boat crosswise; it capsizes; everybody falls into the water. Two or three remain there and are not recovered till the next day. Is there an accident of more common occurrence? It is the terrible and the pathetic breaking in abruptly and imposing silence on laughter and changing it to tears. This is seen every day; it is the regular course of life.
If the masters of the drama, who could not have failed to make so simple an observation, have nevertheless written as if it had been unknown to them, it is apparent that their sold purpose was not to exhibit life as it really is on the stage, that they had in view another object,—that of showing life in a certain aspect to twelve hundred persons assembled in a theater, and of producing on the multiple soul of this audience a certain impression.
They must have said to themselves, or rather they felt instinctively, that every sensation is stronger the more it is prolonged without being opposed by any other; that an individual, and still more an audience, does not pass easily from laughter to tears in order to return immediately from tears to laughter; that they cling to the first impression; that if you wrench them violently from one sentiment and throw them into a contrary, it will be almost impossible to bring them back later on; that these jolts threaten to destroy their pleasure for them, and are especially wrong because they give the impression that in the theater all is false, the events as well a the lighting, thus destroying the illusion.
As we do not pass in real life suddenly from laughter to tears and return immediately, or almost immediately, from tears to laughter, as the suddenness of these changes, however abrupt they may be, is relieved by intervals of time more or less considerable, which the authors cannot preserve in the theater, the rapidity of these movements, aside from the fact that they tire the audience, has this curious disadvantage, that in pretending to give us life in all its reality they destroy the illusion of this same reality.
You may search all Molière, all Regnard, all Dufresny, all Dancourt, and the rest of the dramatists of the beginning of the eighteenth century, without finding in them a scene which is not in the key suitable to comedy. If all the scenes are not comic, all at least are amiable and pleasant. You will find in them often tender conversations between lovers, scenes of jealousy, lovers opposed by parents; but these scenes present to the mind only the agreeable images of youth and hope. If there is mingled with them some shadow of sadness, it is a grief which is not without sweetness; the smile is always just beneath the tears, as in that admirable account of Hector’s farewell to Andromache, which remains the best example of these mingled sentiments of sun and shower.
Molière never wrote, nor wisht to write, anything but comedies which were comedies from beginning to end. And if you will go back to classic antiquity you will see that he was not an innovator. Show me a passage in Plautus to weep over; and even Terence restricts himself to this scale of tempered sentiments,—to scenes in which, if he allows the tears sometimes to form on the eyelashes, they never fall, and are wiped away at once with a smile.
Everywhere the characteristic of comedy in the great periods in which it flourisht is to be comic.
And even to-day, look at the pieces truly worthy of the name, from those of Augier to the marvellous farces of the Palais-Royal by Labiche, Meilhac, and Gondinet. Do you find in them any mixture of the pathetic? Is the unity of impression destroyed by a tearful scene? Can you easily imagine in ‘Célimare le Bien-Aimé,’ the ‘Effrontés,’ the ‘Testament de César Girodot,’ the ‘Faux-Bonshommes,’ the ‘Gendre de M. Poirier,’ or ‘Mercadet’ a situation which brings tears to the eyes?
I have here chosen purposely as examples works very diverse in tone and in style in order to show that this great law of the unity of impression—without which there is no possibility of illusion for an audience of twelve hundred persons—has been observed instinctively by all the playwrights who were truly endowed with the comic genius.
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