Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
has to apologise.
At times the same scene is reproduced with groups of different
characters. Then it not infrequently happens that the first group
consists of masters and the second of servants. The latter repeat in
another key a scene already played by the former, though the rendering
is naturally less refined. A part of the Depit amoureux is constructed
on this plan, as is also Amphitryon. In an amusing little comedy of
Benedix, Der Eigensinn, the order is inverted: we have the masters
reproducing a scene of stubbornness in which their servants have set
the example.
But, quite irrespective of the characters who serve as pegs for the
arrangement of symmetrical situations, there seems to be a wide gulf
between classic comedy and the theatre of to-day. Both aim at
introducing a certain mathematical order into events, while none the
less maintaining their aspect of likelihood, that is to say, of life.
But the means they employ are different. The majority of light comedies
of our day seek to mesmerise directly the mind of the spectator. For,
however extraordinary the coincidence, it becomes acceptable from the
very fact that it is accepted; and we do accept it, if we have been
gradually prepared for its reception. Such is often the procedure
adopted by contemporary authors. In Moliere's plays, on the contrary,
it is the moods of the persons on the stage, not of the audience, that
make repetition seem natural. Each of the characters represents a
certain force applied in a certain direction, and it is because these
forces, constant in direction, necessarily combine together in the same
way, that the same situation is reproduced. Thus interpreted, the
comedy of situation is akin to the comedy of character. It deserves to
be called classic, if classic art is indeed that which does not claim
to derive from the effect more than it has put into the cause.
2. Inversion.--This second method has so much analogy with the first
that we will merely define it without insisting on illustrations.
Picture to yourself certain characters in a certain situation: if you
reverse the situation and invert the roles, you obtain a comic scene.
The double rescue scene in Le Voyage de M. Perrichon belongs to this
class. [Footnote: Labiche, "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon."] There is no
necessity, however, for both the identical scenes to be played before
us. We may be shown only one, provided the other is really in our
minds. Thus, we laugh at the prisoner at the bar lecturing the
magistrate; at a child presuming to teach its parents; in a word, at
everything that comes under the heading of "topsyturvydom." Not
infrequently comedy sets before us a character who lays a trap in which
he is the first to be caught. The plot of the villain who is the victim
of his own villainy, or the cheat cheated, forms the stock-in-trade of
a good many plays. We find this even in primitive farce. Lawyer
Pathelin tells his client of a trick to outwit the magistrate; the
client employs the self-same trick to avoid paying the lawyer. A
termagant of a wife insists upon her husband doing all the housework;
she has put down each separate item on a "rota." Now let her fall into
a copper, her husband will refuse to drag her out, for "that is not
down on his 'rota.'" In modern literature we meet with hundreds of
variations on the theme of the robber robbed. In every case the root
idea involves an inversion of roles, and a situation which recoils on
the head of its author.
Here we apparently find the confirmation of a law, some illustrations
of which we have already pointed out. When a comic scene has been
reproduced a number of times, it reaches the stage of being a classical
type or model. It becomes amusing in itself, quite apart from the
causes which render it amusing. Henceforth, new scenes, which are not
comic de jure, may become amusing de facto, on account of their partial
resemblance to this model. They call up in our mind a more or less
confused image which we know to be comical. They range themselves in a
category representing an officially recognised type of the comic. The
scene of the "robber robbed" belongs to this class. It casts over a
host of other scenes a reflection of the comic element it contains. In
the end it renders comic any mishap that befalls one through one's own
fault, no matter what the fault or mishap may be,--nay, an allusion to
this mishap, a single word that recalls it, is sufficient. There would
be nothing amusing in the saying, "It serves you right, George Dandin,"
were it not for the comic overtones that take up and re-echo it.
3. We have dwelt at considerable length on repetition and inversion; we
now come to the reciprocal interference [Footnote: The word
"interference" has here the meaning given to it in Optics, where it
indicates the partial superposition and neutralisation, by each other,
of two series of light-waves.] of series. This is a comic effect, the
precise formula of which is very difficult to disentangle, by reason of
the extraordinary variety of forms in which it appears on the stage.
Perhaps it might be defined as follows: A situation is invariably comic
when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of
events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different
meanings at the same time.
You will at once think of an equivocal situation. And the equivocal
situation is indeed one which permits of two different meanings at the
same time, the one merely plausible, which is put forward by the
actors, the other a real one, which is given by the public. We see the
real meaning of the situation, because care has been taken to show us
every aspect of it; but each of the actors knows only one of these
aspects: hence the mistakes they make and the erroneous judgments they
pass both on what is going on around them and on what they are doing
themselves. We proceed from this erroneous judgment to the correct one,
we waver between the possible meaning and the real, and it is this
mental seesaw between two contrary interpretations which is at first
apparent in the enjoyment we derive from an equivocal situation. It is
natural that certain philosophers should have been specially struck by
this mental instability, and that some of them should regard the very
essence of the ludicrous as consisting in the collision or coincidence
of two judgments that contradict each other. Their definition, however,
is far from meeting every case, and even when it does, it defines--not
the principle of the ludicrous, but only one of its more or less
distant consequences. Indeed, it is easy to see that the stage-made
misunderstanding is nothing but a particular instance of a far more
general phenomenon,--the reciprocal interference of independent series,
and that, moreover, it is not laughable in itself, but only as a sign
of such an interference.
As a matter of fact, each of the characters in every stage-made
misunderstanding has his setting in an appropriate series of events
which he correctly interprets as far as he is concerned, and which give
the key-note to his words and actions. Each of the series peculiar to
the several characters develop independently, but at a certain moment
they meet under such conditions that the actions and words that belong
to one might just as well belong to another. Hence arise the
misunderstandings and the equivocal nature of the situation. But this
latter is not laughable in itself, it is so only because it reveals the
coincidence of the two independent series. The proof of this lies in
the fact that the author must be continually taxing his ingenuity to
recall our attention to the double fact of independence and
coincidence. This he generally succeeds in doing by constantly renewing
the vain threat of dissolving partnership between the two coinciding
series. Every moment the whole thing threatens to break down, but
manages to get patched up again; it is this diversion that excites
laughter, far more than the oscillation of the mind between two
contradictory ideas. It makes us laugh because it reveals to us the
reciprocal interference of two independent series, the real source of
the comic effect.
And so the stage-made misunderstanding is nothing more than one
particular instance, one means--perhaps the most artificial--of
illustrating the reciprocal interference of series, but it is not the
only one. Instead of two contemporary series, you might take one series
of events belonging to the past and another belonging to the present:
if the two series happen to coincide in our imagination, there will be
no resulting cross-purposes, and yet the same comic effect will
continue to take place. Think of Bonivard, captive in the Castle of
Chillon: one series of facts. Now picture to yourself Tartarin,
travelling in Switzerland, arrested and imprisoned: second series,
independent of the former. Now let Tartarin be manacled to Bonivard's
chain, thus making the two stories seem for a moment to coincide, and
you will get a very amusing scene, one of the most amusing that
Daudet's imagination has pictured. [Tartarin sur les Alpes, by Daudet.]
Numerous incidents of the mock-heroic style, if analysed, would reveal
the same elements. The transposition from the ancient to the
modern--always a laughable one--draws its inspiration from the same
idea. Labiche has made use of this method in every shape and form.
Sometimes he begins by building up the series separately, and then
delights in making them interfere with one another: he takes an
independent group--a wedding-party, for instance--and throws them into
altogether unconnected surroundings, into which certain coincidences
allow of their being foisted for the time being. Sometimes he keeps one
and the same set of characters right through the play, but contrives
that certain of these characters have something to conceal--have, in
fact, a secret understanding on the point--in short, play a smaller
comedy within the principal one: at one moment, one of the two comedies
is on the point of upsetting the other; the next, everything comes
right and the coincidence between the two series is restored.
Sometimes, even, he introduces into the actual series a purely
immaterial series of events, an inconvenient past, for instance, that
some one has an interest in concealing, but which is continually
cropping up in the present, and on each occasion is successfully
brought into line with situations with which it seemed destined to play
havoc. But in every case we find the two independent series, and also
their partial coincidence.
We will not carry any further this analysis of the methods of light
comedy. Whether we find reciprocal interference of series, inversion,
or repetition, we see that the objective is always the same--to obtain
what we have called a MECHANISATION of life. You take a set of actions
and relations and repeat it as it is, or turn it upside down, or
transfer it bodily to another set with which it partially
coincides--all these being processes that consist in looking upon life
as a repeating mechanism, with reversible action and interchangeable
parts. Actual life is comedy just so far as it produces, in a natural
fashion, actions of the same kind,--consequently, just so far as it
forgets itself, for were it always on the alert, it would be
ever-changing continuity, irrevertible progress, undivided unity. And
so the ludicrous in events may be defined as absentmindedness in
things, just as the ludicrous in an individual character always results
from some fundamental absentmindedness in the person, as we have
already intimated and shall prove later on. This absentmindedness in
events, however, is exceptional. Its results are slight. At any rate it
is incurable, so that it is useless to laugh at it. Therefore the idea