CHAPTER V – PLOT IN COMEDY
In many respects the laws of structure determined for the serious drama are equally valid for comedy, but there are also important differences between the two kinds of dramatic creation. First, it may be generally stated that in comedies the action of the plot is much more independent of the characters than it is in the serious drama: it is, as we have already implied, even possible to create a comic plot which shall be really comic, while its persons are nothing more than puppets, the development of the plot being wholly extraneous to the characters. This is the case in The Comedy of Errors, in much so-called farce, in much of the Spanish comedy. Again, the comic action is far less bound to emphasize law in its treatment of events; it can make free use of what we call accident and chance.
Passing now to a more detailed consideration of its structure, we find that comedies fall into two main groups, according as their comic interest does or does not determine the main plot. Compare, for example, King Henry IV with Every Man in His Humour. In the former there is a serious main plot, based on events in English history wherein the fiercest passions were aroused and the largest interests involved, and wherein the actors were of heroic type. The comic interest is found in a number of interspersed scenes whose action is loosely connected with the serious main plot; cut out these scenes, and with few changes the play becomes a serious historical drama. In Jonson’s play, on the other hand, the exact converse is the case. The serious interest – and there is very little – is subordinate. The comic interest is not merely developed in the main plot, it actually constitutes it; cut out this and you destroy the play.
These two plays may be accepted as typical of two great classes of comedies. To those of the first type the name “romantic comedy” has been given, for reasons not wholly connected with its structure; those of the second type have been variously styled, according to considerations foreign to this discussion. To it belong all of Aristophanes, most of Plautus and Terence, most of Jonson and Molière, the comedies of Massinger and Middleton and Congreve. With Henry IV are to be classed all of Shakespeare’s comedies except Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew.
Since the romantic comedy has as its basis a serious main plot, and its comic interests are episodic, it may be temporarily disregarded. It is in the second class of comedies that we shall find the typical comic structure.
Reverting to our illustration of the primitive form of comic plot, – our case of the man who sits down on the floor, – let us start again from this. In actual life we know that this may occur for various reasons: (1) he may have miscalculated the position of the chair, and the fault is therefore his own; or (2) the chair may break, and the fault is no one’s; or (3) some one with malice prepense may have pulled the chair from under him, or may have placed a weak chair where he was likely to sit.
So in comedies. The action may be one where the mistakes, the comic disappointments, arise out of the weakness of the victim, and he alone is to blame, or they may spring from circumstance, and no one is responsible, or they may be deliberately planned by one of the play’s persons, an arch-intriguer, assisted, perhaps, by lucky accident, which he knows how to turn to account.
An example of the first sort is seen, though not with perfect clearness, in Love’s Labours Lost, through the fourth act. The four gentlemen have simply miscalculated their own powers and attempted something beyond them. Hence, all fail signally, and the great scene for which the play is planned, IV, 3, merely presents this failure. Each does in turn expose his fellow, in true “house-that-Jack-built fashion,” but no one of them has planned the downfall of another.
The second kind is exemplified with typical clearness in The Comedy of Errors. Here the whole complication is the result of chance, no one guides its progress, and its conclusion is as much accident as any part of its course.
The third sort is seen, as has just been said, in the last act of Love’s Labour’s Lost, but it is better to select an instance where the entire play is constructed on this principle. Among the multitude of such, we may mention, as being, for one reason or another, unusually good instances, Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (Brainworm and Ed. Knowell are the intriguers); The Silent Woman (arch-intriguers, Dauphine, Clerimont, and Lovewit); Chapman’s All Fools (intriguers, Rinaldo, for the main plot, Cornelio, for a subordinate counter-plot); Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts (intriguers, Wellborn, for the main plot, Allworth and Lovell for the underplot); Molière’s L’École des Maris (intriguers, Isabelle and Valère). Among them, the simplest in structure is Molière’s, and next comes Massinger’s, which we will take as a type because it is English. The argument is, briefly, as follows:
Act I. Wellborn, a prodigal, has ruined himself by his excesses, and his estate has passed into the hands of his uncle, Overreach, an unscrupulous old man who has amassed large wealth by sharp practice. In despair, Wellborn turns for help to Lady Allworth, a rich widow whose late husband he had once befriended in time of need. Out of gratitude for this, Lady Allworth consents to feign a betrothal to Wellborn.
Acts II, III, and IV. On the strength of his expectations, Wellborn is instantly restored to credit. His uncle is anxious to facilitate the match, hoping ultimately to get hold of Lady Allworth’s wealth as he already has got Wellborn’s. He therefore pays his nephew’s debts and entertains him royally.
Overreach has a daughter, Margaret, whom he longs to see married to a title, and he offers her in marriage to Lord Lovell. In the lord’s service is young Allworth, stepson to Lady Allworth, who loves Margaret and is loved by her. Lord Lovell befriends his cause, and while feigning consent to the marriage for himself, helps young Allworth convey Margaret away and marry her.
Meanwhile Marrall, an attorney and an unscrupulous attaché of Overreach, decides that it will be more profitable to serve Wellborn.
Act V. Through Marrall’s agency it is discovered that the deed transferring Wellborn’s estates to his uncle is worthless, and the ownership, therefore, reverts to Wellborn. Next, Overreach learns of the marriage of his daughter with young Allworth. At the double catastrophe he goes mad.
Now, it will be seen that the entire structure of the plot depends on the deliberately planned schemes of Wellborn and Allworth to outwit Overreach. Does this differ from the plan of the serious drama?
In a sense, we might adopt the phraseology of the tragedy, and call the action “a losing struggle, by an imperfect character, against the overpowering forces of life.” We might say that there is found here, the three things essential to tragedy: suffering, struggle, causality.
In a sense, yes; but in a sense so different from the tragic that, though the words may be unchanged, the ideas can no longer be treated as the same.
First: the character is indeed imperfect, but the imperfections are here regarded as material for comic contrast, and subjects for judicial reprehension, not for pity and sympathy. This has already been discussed.
Next, as to the struggle. The result of it in both cases is the overthrow of some one, but the process is different in principle and significance – as different as is our case where the malicious person pulls away the chair from the case where two men grapple in a fair fight. In the serious drama, the hero is contending, it may be against one man, it may be against a host, it may be against himself, it may be against the remorseless “course of things.” We may even know from the beginning that the struggle must end in failure, as we do know in the Oedipus, or in The Cenci; but our hero really fights, he has his chance, all his energies go into the struggle and are staked on the issue. In this kind of comedy, on the other hand, he does not really fight; he is a victim, his overthrow is not really inevitable, it is artfully prearranged.
Finally, the causality in the two kinds of drama is totally different. Tragedy must be based on law, and, as we saw, it is better for the tragedian not to use such events as have about them an air of chance. For comedy this requirement is not imperative. The main thing is the presentation of striking incongruities, and we do not care whether these are evidently grounded in the law of the universe or not; in fact, the range of comic view being limited, it is often better that it should not call too vividly to mind the iron rule of law. Accordingly, we find in comedy the widest license allowed. When Shakespeare, borrowing for his use the old story of the twin brothers, complicates its situations by postulating a second pair of twins as servants to these brothers, we do not cavil at the improbability. If he chose to postulate two pairs of twin sisters, too, we should not object, provided he was master of his material. These considerations have, as will appear, an important bearing on the nature of the comic catastrophe.
So much for general questions. Contrast now more particularly the plans of the two types of drama:
The serious drama usually begins in an apparent equilibrium, from which the conflict develops. In the first part of the play, one of the two contending forces is paramount; in the second, the other, and the outcome is a final equilibrium wholly different from the apparent equilibrium at the beginning.
In the comedy just summarized the case is quite different. Instead of an aggressor meeting an aggressor, there is an aggressor and a victim. It is the natural result of the difference in principle between comedy and tragedy. Instead of a conflict of forces, the comic plots of this type present a process rather like the picking of the lock of a safe; it may be interesting, it may involve great ingenuity and address, but it is on a wholly different basis.
To pursue, for a moment, the figure of the lock: the beginning of the play presents the problem; we see the strong safe, with its lock, apparently secure; we see the would-be lock-breaker, his eyes fixed on the safe, his fingers twitching to get at its secrets. Next, it is hinted that despite this seeming security there are weak points – possibly the lock can be forced. Then comes the process of forcing it, until finally the successful lock-breaker carries out his scheme and enjoys the fruits of his ingenuity.
What the corollaries are, which may be deduced from the fundamental difference between the two problems, will be evident if we consider, one by one, the logical divisions of this type of drama.
[1] Exposition. This has no peculiar features. In the Massinger play, the first act is mainly expositional, the rising action being only suggested at the end of the third scene.
[2] Exciting Force and Rising Action. The exciting force is always found in the resolution of the arch-intriguer to outwit his victim. In the play before us, it is Wellborn’s desperate resolve to have one more try at fortune. Sometimes, as often in the plays of Plautus and Terence, a preliminary action is presented, which is the immediate occasion of this resolution, e.g. a young man falls in love, and plans how to circumvent his father, who opposes him. It is evident that, if in such a case the love-plot is given serious enough emphasis, and our attention is drawn to the issues therein involved, and away from the circumventing of the authorities considered in itself, the play may become serious instead of comic. The emphasis is laid, not on the intellectual problem, but on the emotional crisis. This comes near being the case in As You Like It; it is the case in Romeo and Juliet, and perhaps the impression of weakness left upon us by the last act of this play is partly due to this resemblance between its plan and that of the ordinary comedy; for its tragic catastrophe is brought about, not by the essential constitution of things and the nature of the spiritual problem in itself, but by the accidental failure of an ingeniously arranged scheme which might just as well have been successful.
[3] Climax, and [4] Falling Action. There is, strictly speaking, no climax and no falling action. For, from the very nature of the case, the victim cannot retaliate; it would spoil the play if he did. The movement of the rising action goes steadily forward through the play, though not necessarily at uniform rate. From the standpoint of the intriguer, it might be represented by a line trending upward; from the standpoint of the victim, by one trending downward. In the Massinger play, there is no climax, in the sense in which we have hitherto been using the term. The only possibility of making one would be to take it as formed by Act III, Scene 2, because this scene is the most elaborate one in the play, and the only one in which both main plot and subplot are interwoven. But such an external test is not the sort one uses for tragedy.
[5] Catastrophe. It presents the completed results of the intriguer’s plans, and the total overthrow of the victim. In contrast to the tragic catastrophe it need not be causally determined by what has preceded. Here, as elsewhere throughout the action, causality is not emphasized, and here as elsewhere chance may determine the issue. Thus, in the play mentioned, one-half of the misfortune of Overreach is due, not to Wellborn’s machinations at all, save very indirectly, but to the “Deus ex machina” in the person of Marrall. Nor need the catastrophe have any quality of finality; it is sufficient that it furnish some sort of finish, which may not preclude further activity, renewed machinations, more victimizing, or even a later “turning of the worm” in a retaliatory stroke. Whereas tragedy must be final, comedy need not be more than provisional; it offers a solution only of the specific problem presented. Not that its conclusion is bound to be provisional; this will depend partly upon what has been the underlying purpose of the intrigue. Compare, as illustrating this, the character of the conclusion in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which is approximately final, with that of The Alchemist, which impresses one as not more than provisional. In many cases, it is true, an air of conclusiveness is given by a sweeping moral regeneration of all knaves, taking place in the last act, but this is usually specious and unsatisfying; it is always quite different from the fundamental and absolute readjustment in the true tragic solution.
These are the chief differences to be noted between the comic and the tragic plot. Subordinate differences will, of course, follow as corollaries, but to take them up here would involve detailed analysis of comedy after comedy. The essential thing is to have marked the principal lines of divergence in the two types.
There are, indeed, cases where the lines seem to cross, and perhaps really do so. In Othello, for example, we have an action which conforms, in some respects, rather to the comic than the tragic type. Othello himself is less a fighter than a victim, while Iago’s attitude from the beginning is that of the arch-intriguer in the comedies we have been discussing. He considers himself injured, as does Wellborn; he plans a deliberate attack, as does Wellborn, and enlists the help of others; he chooses the point where his victim is weakest and makes his assault there, appealing to Othello’s impulsive and unreasoning love, as Wellborn appeals to his uncle’s consuming greed of gain. There is, moreover, in Iago’s attitude a kind of grim, colossal humor, while in his scheming there is a cool, if somewhat crude, power that makes us respect him and wins our intellectual sympathy, as does the arch-intriguer in a comedy. The divergence from comedy is found in the fact that (1) the character of the victim is so noble, and is so treated as to evoke our emotional sympathy; and (2) that he is strong enough, when finally aroused, to retaliate with terrible energy and with such terrible effectiveness that our thought is drawn away from the intellectual phases of the case to its emotional issues. [1] But, great as these differences are, the similarity in plan of the first four acts can scarcely be ignored, and it may be one reason why the play does not appeal to all of us as being tragic in the highest sense.
[1 Compare the case of Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, where the feeling toward the victim may range, according to the character of the audience and of the actor, all the way from pity to scornful derision.]
To take an instance of the converse: Molière’s Le Misanthrope seems, to some readers at least, not at all the typical comedy, and if we examine the plan of the plot we shall find that it has traits distinctive rather of tragedy than of comedy; it presents, namely, a real conflict of forces, and one that is grounded in the spiritual nature of the persons concerned. With very slight changes it might have been made a tragedy, and as it is, when read in some moods, it is apt to seem more tragic than comic.
To resume: the plan of the comic action differs decidedly from that of the serious drama in the character of its conflict, in its freedom from the necessity of emphasizing law and its consequent license in use of chance or accident, in the absence of a true climax and a true falling action, and in the nature of its catastrophe. If the serious drama is represented by the projected pyramid, the comedy, such as Massinger’s, may be represented by two lines, an ascending one for the intriguer, a descending one for the victim.
Applying these results to other comedies, it will be seen that they conform fairly well. In the comedies of Plautus the victim is usually a rich old man, the intriguer usually his son or nephew, always assisted by a slave, and often by some other young man. The differences between play and play are found in the differences in the method of attack and in the motives for it. In Jonson’s comedies the plan is the same in principle, but the schemes are exceedingly complicated; there are usually several intriguers with plans somewhat opposed, and there results a number of separate little puzzles, with separate solutions, but all finally brought together in the general solution of the dénouement. Molière’s plots, again, are more simple. [1]
[1 For a fuller discussion of this type of comedy, cf. Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson’s Comedy.]
Turning now from this large group of comedies, let us see how far its principles apply to the group loosely classed as “romantic.” At the beginning of the chapter we turned away from these because the other, by virtue of its simplicity and its clearness of definition, lent itself more readily to analysis. The results thus gained may help us in dealing with the more difficult and elusive “romantic” comedy, or, at least, may afford a firm base from which we may proceed to its investigation.
In the intrigue comedy it was noted that, in supplying the intriguer with a motive for his scheming, the love-interest was usually employed, and it was suggested that if the love-interest was sufficiently emphasized it might overbalance the comic interest, and the play might become more or less serious. In turning from the plays of Plautus to those of Terence one notices, in some cases, a tendency toward this very thing. Terence’s more delicate talent seems to have inclined him to lay a slightly greater emphasis on the serious element of the plot, and there results a change in the proportionate values of the serious and the comic elements. It varies in different plays, but on the whole it seems fair to say that Terence treats the motive-interest, if we may so distinguish it from the intrigue-interest, with a tenderness of touch and gentle delicacy of sympathy that in a later age would have developed into the so-called “romantic” plot. In the Heautontimorumenos, the remorseful old father doing self-imposed penance for his harshness toward his son, the devotion of that son to his mistress, Antiphila, the little touches that sketch the character of the girl Antiphila herself; in the Andria, the overwhelming love of Pamphilus and Glycerium, which seems to have in it something more than the passion we find depicted in Plautus; – these give us glimpses, though no more than glimpses, of a possible development into another sort of comedy.
Such a development is found in full maturity in the work of Shakespeare; and though we may not take the plays of Terence as a link in an actual evolutionary chain, – for the evolution took place on other lines, – we may use them in our own thought as furnishing a transition phase between the two kinds of comedy. [1]
[1 In Italian comedy, however, there seems actually to have been some such evolution. Cf. Violet Paget’s Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy.]
In dealing with Shakespeare we have, it must be remembered, only approximate dates, and cannot base too much on chronology, yet enough seems established to give us some rough notions of grouping and development. The comedies, following the approximate chronology now agreed upon, may be arranged as follows:
- Love’s Labour’s Lost.
- The Comedy of Errors.
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
- The Merchant of Venice.
- The Taming of the Shrew.
- King Henry IV, two parts.
- The Merry Wives of Windsor.
- Much Ado about Nothing.
- As You Like It.
- Twelfth Night.
- All’s Well that Ends Well.
- Measure for Measure.
- Cymbeline.
- The Winter’s Tale.
- The Tempest.
Of the earliest group two, Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Comedy of Errors, have been already accounted for. In both the comic interest determines the main plot, which is in the one case developed out of the characters, in the other out of pure incident apart from character. Yet in the latter case it is significant that Shakespeare, using Plautus’ plot, added to it here and there touches of seriousness not in his original, and the proportions of the two elements in the play are more nearly as in some of Terence’s comedies.
In The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have the romantic comedy proper: there is the comic episode, which could be cut out without maiming the play’s structure, and the serious love-plot, double (as often in Terence) and following in its logical divisions the lines of the serious drama. Because it is so simple and typical, it is worth while to examine it somewhat in detail.
Act I. Exposition: love of Proteus and Julia, friendship of Proteus and Valentine.
Rising Action: Valentine leaves for Milan, Proteus also is to be sent thither.
Act II. Exposition, continued: love of Valentine and Silvia.
Rising Action, continued: in development of Proteus’ treachery toward Julia and toward Valentine. A possible opposition is hinted in Julia’s resolution to go to seek Proteus.
Act III. Climax: apparent success of Proteus’ plans, and banishment of Valentine.
Act IV. Return Action: turn of fortune for Valentine suggested in his being made king of the outlaws; for Proteus it is suggested by the appearance of Julia in Milan; for both it is precipitated by Silvia’s plan to run away.
Act V. End of Return Action, and Resolution: Silvia’s flight accomplished, the pursuit of her brings about the solution.
Here it will be seen that there is a true conflict of forces, a true rise, turning-point, and descent. And if Proteus has some of the characteristics of the arch-intriguer, it is the serious, not the comic aspect of his activity that is emphasized, and its criminal nature.
The broad comedy in the play is embodied in the episodes where Speed and Launce appear. They could be cut out, yet they are really related to the main-plot scenes. For, as the Greeks used to follow up their tragedies by a comic parody, so Shakespeare seems here to have intended a parody of his own serious situations. In II, 2, is presented the parting of the two lovers; in the next scene Launce appears and sets forth, with the help of his slippers and his cane, his own farewell to his family: the tears of his parents, the wails of his cat, and the unnatural indifference of his “stony-hearted dog.” Again, in III, 1, immediately following upon Valentine’s desperate grief at the separation from Silvia, comes Speed with the announcement that he, too, is in love, and he proceeds to discuss the situation. The parallelism may be accidental, but it can scarcely be deemed so. A similar case occurs in Love’s Labour’s Lost, in the Armado-Costard-Jaquenetta episodes, while in As You Like It the parody is elaborated, in Touchstone and Awdry, past the point of mere parody, almost into an independent sub-interest.
But, besides this burlesque treatment of the serious issue, there is, in the presentation of the issue itself, the beginning of a kind of comedy peculiar to Shakespeare, namely, a touching of the serious with a slightly comic light, – of the most tenderly delicate sort, it is true, but unmistakable comedy nevertheless. This is the case in the scenes in which Julia appears (note especially Act I, Scene 2). It is the first trace of the author’s power to look at things in two ways at once, a first gleam of the genius that was later to look at the old Lear through the eyes of the “bitter fool,” and utter his tragedy in a jest, “And yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle”: (Goneril enters) “here comes one o’ the parings.”
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, again, there are the two distinct lines: one the love-interest, – double again, and as usual with the lines inter-crossing until straightened out by Oberon, – and the other the comic interest in the tradesmen of Athens and their interlude. The third group, the fairies and Puck, brings in a semi-lyric element foreign to our present discussion. So far all is clear: the comic in the tradesmen’s scenes is easily placed, and it does not affect the main plot. But once more, in this main plot, we find the note of comedy even stronger than in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, while in the entire treatment there is a tone of whimsicality that is perhaps a result of the midsummer night’s witchery. The serious and the comic standpoints are represented for us in Oberon and Puck, as they look on at the confusion of the two pairs of lovers. Oberon, taking it earnestly, thinks of the consequences:
“What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite And laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight: Of thy misprision must perforce ensue Some true love turned and not a false turned true.”
Puck, the mocker, enjoys the situation:
“Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand; And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover’s fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be? Oberon. Stand aside: the noise they make Will cause Demetrius to awake. Puck. Then will two at once woo one; That must needs be sport alone; And those things do best please me That befall preposterously.”
And again, when Oberon reprimands the imp:
“This is thy negligence: still thou mistakest. Or else committ’st thy knaveries wilfully.”
Puck answers, unabashed:
“Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
. . . . . . . . .
And so far am I glad it did so sort
As this their jangling I esteem a sport.” [1]
[1 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III, 2.]
And evidently the poet himself was able to see at once with the eyes of Oberon and of Puck.
In The Merchant of Venice a sterner note is struck. As always, there is the episodic comedy and the love-plots, but there is also the Shylock-Bassanio interest. And here the query intrudes itself: did Shakespeare mean the Shylock plot to be comic or not? It has, indeed, even now a grim kind of comic effect, but we must suspect that the Elizabethan audience laughed where we do not. Possibly Shakespeare meant him to be comic, and without purposing to do so lapsed occasionally into a sympathetic treatment simply because he could not help doing this with any character that he handled long. This would account on the one hand for the hardness of tone in the Jessica plot, and on the other hand for the sympathetic insight in such passages as Shylock’s magnificent outburst in answer to Salarino:
“Salar. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what’s that good for?
Shy. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge... I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands... If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” etc.
[1 The Merchant of Venice, III, 1.]
According to this interpretation, we see in Shylock, despite such passages, our familiar comic victim, grown indeed more formidable, and requiring, not the justice but the injustice of the law courts to overcome him, but the comic victim nevertheless, whose downfall, as in typical comedy of intrigue, brings with it the happiness of the lovers. Shakespeare’s mistake, then, was in making us sympathize too keenly with Shylock, though, as we have said, this may not have been the case for his own day.
This brings us to Henry IV, whose structure we have already settled. For, though the character of Falstaff really overshadows the entire play, it does not affect its structure, and the comic scenes are episodic.
In The Merry Wives of Windsor we have a unique case: the episodic comedy of the two preceding plays is, by a tour de force, made the main plot of this one, while a serious subplot is added. The victimizing is an end in itself, instead of being, as in the usual comic main plot, a means to some other end; and Falstaff, from a unique comic hero, has deteriorated into a commonplace comic butt. He has lost his peculiar wit, and – most impossible of all – he takes himself seriously, so that instead of laughing with him we are laughing at him. The character of the play bears out the tradition concerning its writing; it is evidently a piece of hack work, and though the hack work of genius cannot be ignored, the play may, in the present discussion, be set one side.
The next three comedies form a closely related group, which need here scarcely be considered apart. All have serious love-plots and all have comic by-play, that in Twelfth Night being curiously affiliated with the type found in Molière and Jonson, while in Rosalind we might, if we chose, see an arch-intriguer turned somewhat ethereal and exceeding moral, managing the others for their best good and her own innocent amusement. In all three the serious plot is occasionally given a comic tone, the comedy being also partly perceived even by the participants themselves. In these three plays we get the perfection of the Shakespearean comedy, and we need not go on to the last two groups, for, though the bitter jests of All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure and the idyllic temperateness of The Tempest show a tremendous range in tone and many interesting points of detail, there is nothing new in underlying structure.
Pausing here, then, and looking over the range of Shakespearean comedy, we find certain qualities characterizing it: a main plot embodying the love-interest, and episodic scenes embodying the comic interest, the love-interest tinged with comedy yet not so as to destroy its seriousness. It is thus allied with both kinds of drama: with the serious, in that its main ends are serious and its use of the emotions is so; with the comic by reason of this touch of comedy in the treatment, and also by its emancipation from law. For these serious plots have in this respect almost as much license as has pure comedy, and, whereas tragedy is grounded in the spiritual laws of human life, these present to us situations constructed by the fancy and imagination from materials furnished by human life. In the reconstruction, certain things are left out, and that which is above all emphasized in tragedy is here steadily ignored, the binding force of the law, – “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The imagination is free to work, and in the result there is an element of the fanciful, even of the whimsical.
Thus, of the three forms, tragedy, comedy, and this Shakespearean type of comedy, each selects out of life certain parts – no one is complete. Comedy is, in one way, the most limited in its view and the most superficial, it emphasizes certain intellectual phases of things but leaves out others, and it avoids an appeal to the emotions; tragedy is the deepest, laying stress on the emotional phases of life, but treating them not simply in themselves, as does the lyric, but in their relations to will and to outer fact. The romantic comedy is somewhere between these two extremes: its treatment hovers between the surface view, which is characteristic of the comic, and the deeper insight that is essential to the tragic; it makes use of the emotions, but ignores their causal relations.
It will be evident that this intermediate position gives the fullest possible scope to the poetic imagination, and we see how in The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream it almost passes out of drama proper and verges on what we might call free dramatic fantasia. It is because of these qualities, too, that it is to the lover of the drama peculiarly satisfying. It has neither the thinness that often characterizes pure comedy by reason of its preponderating intellectuality, nor the almost oppressive emotional intensity of tragedy; yet it is free to employ the resources of both tragedy and comedy, while it may range in tone from the temperateness of the epic to the emotional depth of the lyric. It has at once richness and delicacy; it is at once philosophical and fanciful; it is the most “poetic” of forms. Even Jonson, the high priest of the intellectual in drama, when, for the only time in his dramatic career, he gave freer play to the other side of his nature, adopted a form akin to this; and Shakespeare, though his mightiest achievements are in tragedy, attained in this form his most nearly perfect artistic excellence.
