CHAPTER V – THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF COMIC EFFECT
Perhaps nothing in the province of literary forms is so baffling as comedy. Considered objectively, as an art-product, it trenches on the realm of the grotesque, confessedly one of the most difficult problems of aesthetics, while in its subjective aspect it requires an analysis of our intellectual processes which has not yet been satisfactorily given us by psychologists. Moreover, in considering concrete literary examples of comedy we are constantly checked by the conviction that the perception of what is comic is something very unstable, subject to change with process of time, and showing wide divergence among different classes of society living at the same time. This is, of course, partly true also of our perception of the tragic, but by no means to the same extent. For tragedy, as we have seen, deals with phases of human nature which are relatively eternal and unchanging. We cannot, of course, affirm that our perception of the tragic in the Oedipus is exactly the same as was that of Sophocles’ contemporaries; but certainly time has made far less difference here than it has in the understanding and appreciation of Aristophanes, and this quite aside from the inevitable obscurity of the comic poet’s political allusions. Apparently, the feelings to which tragedy appeals attained a high degree of development at an earlier time than did those to which comedy appeals, and they have therefore undergone less change.
Especially in the last few centuries has the comic sense been undergoing a modification intimately connected with the development of that group of feelings which may be roughly classed as the philanthropic. At the end of the sixteenth century, the sweetest-natured gentleman of his age could, without argument, class physical deformity among the legitimate sources of laughter. [1] To-day such a sentiment would at once stamp the holder of it as lacking in fine feeling and sympathetic instincts. It has only recently occurred to Shakespeare students that many of his scenes which to us are tragic or pathetic were perhaps comic or partly comic to his audience, and, right or wrong in the given instances, the suggestion is extremely interesting as a recognition of the instability of the comic sense, and as a step toward the study of its evolution. [2]
[1 Sidney, Defense of Poesy, ed. Cook, p. 51.]
[2 Cf. John Corbin, The Elizabethan Hamlet, and Barrett Wendell, William Shakespeare.]
Such a study is here inadmissible; all we can do is to recognize that the problem exists, and admit that what is to be said in this chapter must necessarily be subject to modification when the subject shall have been worked out further.
It is generally agreed that the sense of the comic arises from a perception of incongruity. The incongruity may be physical or spiritual, or both; it may be perceptual or conceptual, or both; it may exist in space or in time, or in both; and, according as it is one or another of these, there results one or another variety of comic effect. It may be helpful to make a rough scheme of these classes of comic effects, always remembering that any such scheme can only approximate completeness and only suggest truth.
A. The incongruity is purely conceptual, as in the various forms of wit. Here we may class puns, double meanings, irony, hyperbole, etc. An example is the well-known question, addressed to a servant carrying a roasted hare, “Is that your own hare or a wig?”
B. The incongruity is perceptual as well as conceptual.
I. It is based on a perception of successive events. The source of the comic effect may be stated in general terms as the contrast between expectation and fulfilment. A simple example of this is the case of a man who goes to sit down in a chair, the chair is drawn away, he sits on the floor. Such an occurrence is almost certain to raise a laugh, and the comic in our modern variety show is largely of this character.
In comedy of a higher type, the cases are less simple, but the principle is the same. The occurrences are partly or wholly in the realm of the intellectual or social, rather than the physical life. Examples of this are the relations between Rosalind and Orlando in As You Like It, and the development of the main plots of any of Plautus’ or Terence’s comedies. [1] These last, however, contain much of the simpler comic, of the variety-show type; so also does Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. The case in As You Like It, on the other hand, affiliates with the next group. Indeed, nearly all comedy of intrigue, though its main plot may be reduced to this type, involves some character-treatment, and must therefore be referred in part to the following group.
[1 Cf. infra, pp. 139 ff.]
II. The incongruity is based on a perception of appearances, simultaneous rather than successive. An example is the effect produced by the juxtaposition of a very tall and a very short man, or a very fat and a very thin man. The case is a good one to take, because it is so easily analyzable. The two members of the comparison are here supplied to perception, while a third element – the conception of the normal man – exists in the mind of the percipient as the standard from which both deviate. That this conceptual norm must exist, and must be a norm common to both members of the comparison presented, is shown by the fact that the contrast between a tall man and a child is usually not funny to us, because we apply different standards to the two; whereas, if the child attempts to take on a man’s ways, he brings upon himself the application of the man’s standard, and gets laughed at. Similarly, we laugh when a man adopts a child’s manner. Again, the sight of a big tree and a small one side by side is not usually funny, because we have no definitely established standard of size for trees in general. The examples might be multiplied indefinitely, showing the necessity for a common standard, and a definite one.
Starting from these simple cases, we find comic effects ranging all the way up to those of very great complexity. The cases of actual physical deformity, of drunkenness, of the milder forms of insanity, all of which have ceased to be funny to many people, still are highly comic to many, and must be classed here; also instances like the use made of Falstaff’s huge size, in King Henry IV, or of Ursula’s in Bartholomew Fair. Our modern comic stage has much of this sort of thing. More complex, but essentially akin, are the cases where the emphasis is laid upon eccentricities of character. The standard applied may be a moral one, as often in Jonson, or an intellectual one, as perhaps in the case of Osric or Polonius in Hamlet, or a social one, as in many of Molière’s plays. Here we must class all the so-called “Comedy of Humors.” Here belong all the effects to which Meredith has exclusively applied the term “Comedy,” his standard of reference being the standard of common sense of the well-trained social man considered primarily as in society. [1]
[1 Cf. George Meredith, An Essay on Comedy.]
C. There appears to be yet another source of comic effect, which is, however, fortunately growing less and less important. That, namely, which arises from the mere sight of pain, especially pain involving violent movement. To take, as usual, a simple instance, the sight of a man getting a beating is apt to appear funny to some people, even to-day, and any one who reads Aristophanes and Plautus and Terence, or even the Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan drama, is almost forced to conclude that beatings were esteemed funny per se. Of course the comic effect in these cases may often be interpreted as lying not in the beating qua beating, but in the beating qua surprise, as, for instance, in the Comedy of Errors, IV, 4, where Dromio enters, with the rope’s end his master had sent him for, and, instead of thanks, gets a taste of it himself. But, placing the most charitable construction on such instances, we are still forced to suspect that, in the comic incident as in case of roast pig, the beating may have helped to “impart a gusto.” And this suspicion is strengthened if we note that in all comic surprise the surprise is almost always somewhat disagreeable for the person at whom we laugh, which only means that such comic denouements are, so to speak, beatings in disguise. Perhaps, then, Hobbes was right, at least in his estimate of the natural man, when he calls the comic sense “a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly.”
Leaving out of account this last group, which is partly provided for in group B, we have two main classes of comic effects, of which the second falls into two parts, according as the contrasts occur; simultaneously or successively, and so have to do respectively with plot and with character. But of course, though these groups are separable in thought, they are not so in experience, and the scheme just given makes, we must repeat, no claim to subtlety of discrimination. For in dealing with anything so shifting and elusive as the comic sense, any schematic statement imposing, as it does, hard and fast limits where no such really exist, must of necessity be inadequate and partly false. But it is nevertheless useful if it be taken as merely indicating the main lines of comic effect. It will be found that most literary comedy can be easily put in one or another or in several of the above categories.
The first division, A, may be disregarded in this discussion, since it is only incidental in the drama. Group B, I and II are essential, as they concern the treatment of life in its two aspects: character (physical or spiritual) and plot. For it is with these that the drama essentially deals.
It is evident that all the cases suggested in the scheme just given have certain things in common; they imply a certain attitude on the part of the percipient quite different from the serious or tragic attitude. Every case makes an appeal to the intellect primarily, and to the emotions only secondarily, if at all. The very word “incongruity” implies a process of comparison, which implies the reference to some standard or norm. A fat man is funny, not in virtue of his fatness per se, but because most men are not fat. One may ask, “But why is that funny?” which is merely to ask why any incongruity is comic. There is as yet no answer, any more than there is to the question why laughter rather than any other bodily contortion should be the physical expression of amusement. We must take these as ultimate facts, and leave their further explanation to the physiological psychologists.
To return, the whole matter is seen to be dependent on perception of relations and the assumption of a standard, of reference.
But further, the incongruity will be perceived as comic only if the attention be held closely to the particular contrast to be made. If it is allowed to wander, to take into consideration other aspects of the subject presented, the sense of the comic may give place to some other feeling. The appeal has thus far been to the intellect merely, and to the intellect working along a narrow and definitely prescribed line. But if the emotions are called in, or if the mind breaks over the prescribed limits of the treatment, the comic incongruity may be forgotten in more serious thoughts. If, for instance, after smiling at the sight of our very tall man walking beside our very short one, we approach them, and suddenly perceive that the short man is a cripple and deformed, the smile vanishes. Why? Because a whole set of feelings are called into activity of such a nature and strength as quite to overwhelm the intellectual perception of contrast. We perceive the contrast, indeed, all the more vividly, but our thought dwells not on the contrast per se, intellectually considered, but on what it involves to the cripple himself. Our emotions are aroused, our sympathy is evoked.
Thus it may be said that the perception of the comic has in it something arbitrary and limited. It requires a point of view which shall cut off from the mental vision the real issues of life and its vital substance, – the emotions and susceptibilities that make it subject to pleasure or pain. If the view be changed, so as to include these, the comic usually vanishes. [1] The distinction is one of treatment, of attitude, not of original material, and this is why the same material may be either comic or tragic according to its treatment – why even the same treatment may appear to us comic or tragic according as we fix our attention upon one or another aspect of it; for this reason two people may watch the same occurrence, and one may smile and the other be saddened by it.
[1 But cf. infra, p. 65-66.]
Take as further illustration an instance from life and one from literature:
A boy stands convulsed with laughter as he watches the wild contortions of two cats whose tails have been wired together; another boy, too small to interfere, may be suffering actual pain at the same sight. What is the difference? In a sense, both boys are right, for, though they are looking at the same occurrence, what they see is not the same: the thing the big boy sees is funny; the thing the little boy sees is painful. The little boy feels the pain of the tightly wound wire as it cuts into the animals’ flesh, he feels the frenzy of the helpless creatures, he resents the brute strength that can willingly cause such tortures. The big boy, on the other hand, simply does not see or feel anything of all this: he sees merely the contortions of the animals, their total failure to comprehend the real cause of their difficulty, and the inadequacy of the means they take to meet it. At the present time society, on the whole, stands with the small boy and condemns the big one; three centuries ago it would have done precisely the reverse; and each position is intellectually explicable though to us only one seems morally justifiable.
Take now an instance from literature:
In Lear the subject-matter is the treatment of an old, helpless father by his daughters, and it is so handled as to be one of the most terrible tragedies ever written. But is this the only possible treatment? Turn to Aristophanes, and find in The Clouds precisely the same theme made the basis of a comedy – of comedy, indeed, to appreciate which we must divest ourselves of some modern preconceptions, but genuine comedy nevertheless, and not cruel, simply because it is out of the realm of the emotions entirely.
There is, then, this fundamental difference between tragedy and comedy: a difference in point of view – a difference not in the thing as perceived by the eye, but in the thing as conceived by the mind. We may say that tragedy interprets life by emphasizing its vital realities; comedy reconstructs it by emphasizing certain aspects of it, selected so as to make good contrasts, striking incongruities. Each is eminently selective, but the principle of selection is different. And the comic standpoint may be assumed toward almost any subject: it may be momentary, and we have its light playing over the situation for an instant and then going out, as when Hamlet rouses himself from his bitter melancholy to make sport of Polonius or Osric; or it may be pervasive, affecting the entire conception of life as represented by the artist, as in Shakespeare’s early comedies (Love’s Labour’s Lost, Comedy of Errors) and Jonson’s typical ones; or it may single out certain characters for comic treatment in the midst of an otherwise serious presentation of a subject, as in Shakespeare’s later comedies. And according as it is more or less pervasive do we get all the gradations between unmixed comedy or pure farce at the one extreme and the tragedy with comic lights at the other.
To return now to our classification of comic effects. It has thus far been based on differences in subject-matter, and we have distinguished the comedy whose main point lies in the incongruities of men’s character, from the comedy which emphasizes mainly the incongruities in the things that happen to men. And if The Comedy of Errors is a purer example of the second class than King Henry IV is of the first, this is because, dramatically, character can scarcely be presented save through action, and Aristotle’s assertion – difficult to explain as it stands – is unquestionably true if we change its application and read: “Without action there cannot be a comedy; there may be without character.” [1]
[1 Cf. Poetics, VI, “Without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character.”]
But in the group of character comedies there is another basis of distinction. For incongruity of character implies – it springs from – imperfection of character. If a man’s character were in perfect poise, if it were absolutely symmetrical, it would not be comic. Comedy, then, is really based on imperfections in character, but considered from the comic, not the tragic standpoint.
Now it is evident that one may view these imperfections in one of several ways: one may simply enjoy them as such, without forming a judgment of the moral or intellectual level of the person in whom they are manifested. Or one may, without losing sight of the comic, regard the person with sympathy, or even love. Or one may, consciously or unconsciously, make a judgment, and there is added to our perception of the comic, and modifying this perception, a feeling of superiority, moral or intellectual or both, while we may express this judgment in terms varying from the gentlest irony to the severest condemnation, according to our mood and the nature of the subject. This was the sort of comedy of which Sidney was speaking when he said, “The comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be, so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one.” [1] The significant thing here is the use of the two words “scornful” and “ridiculous.” “Ridiculous” carries with it a notion of superiority on the part of the percipient which is not so palpably implied in other words for the comic; “scornful” still further emphasizes this, leaving out the notion of the comic altogether; and the concluding phrase of the passage makes the writer’s standpoint yet clearer.
[1 The Defense of Poesy, p. 28.]
Such a passage, especially coming from Sidney, is highly significant. What he would have said if he had lived to see the Shakespearean comedy we can only surmise. Perhaps he might then have seen the possibility of anothher kind of comic perception, wherein we laugh at the folly and love the fool. But, as it stands, the passage fairly represents the type of comedy we have termed judicial.
Jonson’s is a stronger statement of the same view:
“But, with an armed, and resolved hand,
I’ll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth...
... and with a whip of steel,
Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
. . . . . . . . . .
“... Well, I will scourge those apes,
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
As large as is the stage whereon we act;
Where they shall see the time’s deformity
Anatomized in every nerve and sinew.
... my strict hand
Was made to seize on vice...” [1][1 Every Man out of His Humour; Induction.]
And Meredith’s description of Molière’s comedy gives us only another aspect of this kind of comedy:
“Never did man wield so shrieking a scourge upon vice, but his consummate self-mastery is not shaken while administering it. Tartuffe and Harpagon, in fact, are each made to whip himself and his class, the false pietists, and the insanely covetous. Molière has only set them in motion. He strips Folly to the skin, displays the imposture of the creature, and is content to offer her better clothing... The source of his wit is clear reason: it is a fountain of that soil; and it springs to vindicate reason, common sense, rightness and justice.” [1]
[1 Meredith: An Essay on Comedy, pp. 27, 28.]
These two attitudes, the non-judicial and the judicial, though of course neither one is ever adopted with perfect consistency by any given writer, make a convenient basis for distinguishing the two main tendencies of comedy. If we seek for literary types, we shall find the one predominating in Shakespeare, Dickens, George Eliot; the other predominating in Jonson, Molière, Thackeray, Meredith; while Addison and Goldsmith are on the border line between.
We have called the second sort satiric comedy, because its tendency is toward satire. This will be apparent if we make a mental survey of the two fields of comedy and satire, and see how difficult it is at some points to distinguish them. Making Shakespeare one end of the scale, and Juvenal the other, we find next Shakespeare, but with satiric qualities, Addison and Thackeray; close to Juvenal, but with comic qualities, Swift, with Pope and Dryden as subordinate types; between these would come Jonson and Molière, while Aristophanes verges rather on satire, and Rabelais rather on comedy, though a rigid classification of either of these last is beyond possibility.
On the other hand, the pure comedy shades off into other forms. It is, we have said, non-judicial, but one of the reasons why it is non-judicial is because it is sympathetic. Now we have seen that keen sympathy is usually incompatible with comic perception. That it was inevitably and invariably incompatible we expressly did not affirm. For here, as in the case of satiric comedy, there is no hard and fast line drawn, but the two things may shade off the one into the other. We may have the purely comic, where the sympathies, in this sense, are not invoked, as in the Launce episodes of The Two Gentlemen of Verona; or as in Sir John Falstaff, – the pure comic preponderating, but enough sympathy so that transition to the pathetic is possible, as hinted in the scene of Falstaff’s rebuff at the hands of the young king, and the account of his death. [1] Accentuate the sympathy farther, retaining the comic, and you get Cervantes’ comedy; accentuate it still farther and you get the Fool in Lear.
[1 King Henry IV, Part II, Act V, Scene 5, King Henry V, Act II, Scenes 2 and 3. Probably the first of these Scenes was intended by Shakespeare to be comic.]
Thus we find that the comic sense tends to vary in one of these two directions, – toward the pathetic or even the tragic on the one hand, and toward the satiric on the other. And it is evident that in the case of comedians like Jonson and Molière, who stand part way on the road toward satire, any discussion which does not take into account the satiric as well as the comic aspect must necessarily be inadequate.
One more quality of comedy must be mentioned here, though its purport will be more fully shown in the chapter on comic plot-structure. It is this: comedy, from the arbitrariness, the narrow limitation of its view, leaves out much of life; moreover, the things it leaves out are those things that we are accustomed to call the serious realities of life, – the realities of pain and death, and the inexorable sway of law. Hence, comedy is not bound, as is tragedy, to base itself on law; it may make a much freer use of what we call chance; the events and people with which it deals may, if we may use a figure, all be largely external. As an actual fact, comedy does do this, and compared with tragedy, the emphasis on causality, on law, is slight.
Summing up: we have seen that comic effects have a common basis in incongruity, contrast; that the incongruity may lie principally in the realm of events, and we have comic intrigue, or in the realm of appearances, and we have comic character; while usually both these are found in conjunction, but with preponderating emphasis on one or the other, which gives us farce or intrigue comedy on the one hand and character comedy on the other. We have seen, too, that comedy differs from tragedy not so much in subject-matter as in point of view and treatment. Finally, we have noted that comedy itself varies according to the attitude of the author or the percipient, tending, where it becomes judicial, toward satire; where it becomes sympathetic, toward pathos and tragedy.
