Laughs That Won’t Go Away

Another reason to beware of mixing heart with laughs

The One Goal

Francisque Sarcey in his ‘Treatise on the Theater’ or Essai d’une Esthétique de Théâtre (a series of columns he wrote in the summer of 1876) was adamant that tragedy and comedy do not mix in the theater. Thus if a playwright’s aim was pity, fear, or tears, let him not seek to inspire laughs except briefly; if his aim was laughter, let him not try for pathos unless it be pleasant and sweet, such as the (assuredly temporary) parting of lovers. In his columns, Sarcey admitted of several exceptions, which had the effect of diluting his position to the notion that a play ought not be equally balanced between tears and laughs. All the same, when it came to comedy, he was strongly of the opinion that a wise playmaker would follow Molière’s example and go for laughs from the rising of the curtain to its final falling.

My Own Addition

Sarcey wrote from first principles, and the columns he left us in this series can only serve as the general introduction of the much-longer work he would have given us had he treated the matter seriously. Instead he merely filled in the weeks between new plays of any note, in the summer doldrums of the year 1867, with this columns, and as soon as new plays opened in September he was back on his regular beat reviewing. This is most unfortunate, since it means Sarcey never got round to detailing the specific observations he had made, such as ‘les scènes à faire,’ and other more technical matters, which are so specific that they would have filled the later heart and end of whatever tome he might have produced.

This note of mine may have been something Sarcey had noted; it is possible that the comedies of Sarcey’s time were not so parodic, satiric, or postmodern that the notion would have occurred to him. It certainly would have occurred to him had he written in 1976 or later.

The idea is this:

When a talesman gets his audience to laughing, it is hard to get them to take anything seriously.

This of course implies that the way the talesman has got his audience to laughing, is laughing at the situation before them, and not with the characters (at least not with most of them).

Once he has won his audience to that point, should the talesman then present them with any serious matter whatsoever, which he himself takes seriously, as do the characters themselves, the audience will not take them seriously. Not at first. At first we will be looking for the moment when the tenderness, the grief, will be undermined by a pratfall, something that robs the characters of their dignity. In short we won’t know how to take it … what’s this, something serious and heartfelt? Nah, must be just a setup for a fart, belch, stumble, or fraud.

(Composed on keyboard Saturday, May 3, 2008)