Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
after each repulse to continue his patter. And when Sganarelle finally
drives Pancrace back and shuts him up inside the house--inside the box,
one is tempted to say--a window suddenly flies open, and the head of
the philosopher again appears as though it had burst open the lid of a
box.
The same by-play occurs in the Malade Imaginaire. Through the mouth of
Monsieur Purgon the outraged medical profession pours out its vials of
wrath upon Argan, threatening him with every disease that flesh is heir
to. And every time Argan rises from his seat, as though to silence
Purgon, the latter disappears for a moment, being, as it were, thrust
back into the wings; then, as though Impelled by a spring, he rebounds
on to the stage with a fresh curse on his lips. The self-same
exclamation: "Monsieur Purgon!" recurs at regular beats, and, as it
were, marks the TEMPO of this little scene.
Let us scrutinise more closely the image of the spring which is bent,
released, and bent again. Let us disentangle its central element, and
we shall hit upon one of the usual processes of classic
comedy,--REPETITION.
Why is it there is something comic in the repetition of a word on the
stage? No theory of the ludicrous seems to offer a satisfactory answer
to this very simple question. Nor can an answer be found so long as we
look for the explanation of an amusing word or phrase in the phrase or
word itself, apart from all it suggests to us. Nowhere will the usual
method prove to be so inadequate as here. With the exception, however,
of a few special instances to which we shall recur later, the
repetition of a word is never laughable in itself. It makes us laugh
only because it symbolises a special play of moral elements, this play
itself being the symbol of an altogether material diversion. It is the
diversion of the cat with the mouse, the diversion of the child pushing
back the Jack-in-the-box, time after time, to the bottom of his
box,--but in a refined and spiritualised form, transferred to the realm
of feelings and ideas. Let us then state the law which, we think,
defines the main comic varieties of word-repetition on the stage: IN A
COMIC REPETITION OF WORDS WE GENERALLY FIND TWO TERMS: A REPRESSED
FEELING WHICH GOES OFF LIKE A SPRING, AND AN IDEA THAT DELIGHTS IN
REPRESSING THE FEELING ANEW.
When Dorine is telling Orgon of his wife's illness, and the latter
continually interrupts him with inquiries as to the health of Tartuffe,
the question: "Et tartuffe?" repeated every few moments, affords us the
distinct sensation of a spring being released. This spring Dorine
delights in pushing back, each time she resumes her account of Elmire's
illness. And when Scapin informs old Geronte that his son has been
taken prisoner on the famous galley, and that a ransom must be paid
without delay, he is playing with the avarice of Geronte exactly as
Dorine does with the infatuation of Orgon. The old man's avarice is no
sooner repressed than up it springs again automatically, and it is this
automatism that Moliere tries to indicate by the mechanical repetition
of a sentence expressing regret at the money that would have to be
forthcoming: "What the deuce did he want in that galley?" The same
criticism is applicable to the scene in which Valere points out to
Harpagon the wrong he would be doing in marrying his daughter to a man
she did not love. "No dowry wanted!" interrupts the miserly Harpagon
every few moments. Behind this exclamation, which recurs automatically,
we faintly discern a complete repeating-machine set going by a fixed
idea.
At times this mechanism is less easy to detect, and here we encounter a
fresh difficulty in the theory of the comic. Sometimes the whole
interest of a scene lies in one character playing a double part, the
intervening speaker acting as a mere prism, so to speak, through which
the dual personality is developed. We run the risk, then, of going
astray if we look for the secret of the effect in what we see and
hear,--in the external scene played by the characters,--and not in the
altogether inner comedy of which this scene is no more than the outer
refraction. For instance, when Alceste stubbornly repeats the words, "I
don't say that!" on Oronte asking him if he thinks his poetry bad, the
repetition is laughable, though evidently Oronte is not now playing
with Alceste at the game we have just described. We must be careful,
however, for, in reality, we have two men in Alceste: on the one hand,
the "misanthropist" who has vowed henceforth to call a spade a spade,
and on the other the gentleman who cannot unlearn, in a trice, the
usual forms of politeness, or even, it may be, just the honest fellow
who, when called upon to put his words into practice, shrinks from
wounding another's self-esteem or hurting his feelings. Accordingly,
the real scene is not between Alceste and Oronte, it is between Alceste
and himself. The one Alceste would fain blurt out the truth, and the
other stops his mouth just as he is on the point of telling everything.
Each "I don't say that!" reveals a growing effort to repress something
that strives and struggles to get out. And so the tone in which the
phrase is uttered gets more and more violent, Alceste becoming more and
more angry--not with Oronte, as he thinks--but with himself. The
tension of the spring is continually being renewed and reinforced until
it at last goes off with a bang. Here, as elsewhere, we have the same
identical mechanism of repetition.
For a man to make a resolution never henceforth to say what he does not
think, even though he "openly defy the whole human race," is not
necessarily laughable; it is only a phase of life at its highest and
best. For another man, through amiability, selfishness, or disdain, to
prefer to flatter people is only another phase of life; there is
nothing in it to make us laugh. You may even combine these two men into
one, and arrange that the individual waver between offensive frankness
and delusive politeness, this duel between two opposing feelings will
not even then be comic, rather it will appear the essence of
seriousness if these two feelings through their very distinctness
complete each other, develop side by side, and make up between them a
composite mental condition, adopting, in short, a modus vivendi which
merely gives us the complex impression of life. But imagine these two
feelings as INELASTIC and unvarying elements in a really living man,
make him oscillate from one to the other; above all, arrange that this
oscillation becomes entirely mechanical by adopting the well-known form
of some habitual, simple, childish contrivance: then you will get the
image we have so far found in all laughable objects, SOMETHING
MECHANICAL IN SOMETHING LIVING; in fact, something comic.
We have dwelt on this first image, the Jack-in-the-box, sufficiently to
show how comic fancy gradually converts a material mechanism into a
moral one. Now we will consider one or two other games, confining
ourselves to their most striking aspects.
2. THE DANCING-JACK.--There are innumerable comedies in which one of
the characters thinks he is speaking and acting freely, and,
consequently, retains all the essentials of life, whereas, viewed from
a certain standpoint, he appears as a mere toy in the hands of another
who is playing with him. The transition is easily made, from the
dancing-jack which a child works with a string, to Geronte and Argante
manipulated by Scapin. Listen to Scapin himself: "The MACHINE is all
there"; and again: "Providence has brought them into my net," etc.
Instinctively, and because one would rather be a cheat than be cheated,
in imagination at all events, the spectator sides with the knaves; and
for the rest of the time, like a child who has persuaded his playmate
to lend him his doll, he takes hold of the strings himself and makes
the marionette come and go on the stage as he pleases. But this latter
condition is not indispensable; we can remain outside the pale of what
is taking place if only we retain the distinct impression of a
mechanical arrangement. This is what happens whenever one of the
characters vacillates between two contrary opinions, each in turn
appealing to him, as when Panurge asks Tom, Dick, and Harry whether or
no he ought to get married. Note that, in such a case, a comic author
is always careful to PERSONIFY the two opposing decisions. For, if
there is no spectator, there must at all events be actors to hold the
strings.
All that is serious in life comes from our freedom. The feelings we
have matured, the passions we have brooded over, the actions we have
weighed, decided upon, and carried through, in short, all that comes
from us and is our very own, these are the things that give life its
ofttimes dramatic and generally grave aspect. What, then, is requisite
to transform all this into a comedy? Merely to fancy that our seeming,
freedom conceals the strings of a dancing-Jack, and that we are, as the
poet says,
... humble marionettes The wires of which are pulled by Fate.
[Footnote: ... d'humbles marionnettes Dont le fil est aux mains de la
Necessite. SULLY-PRUDHOMME.]
So there is not a real, a serious, or even a dramatic scene that fancy
cannot render comic by simply calling forth this image. Nor is there a
game for which a wider field lies open.
3. THE SNOW-BALL.--The farther we proceed in this investigation into
the methods of comedy, the more clearly we see the part played by
childhood's memories. These memories refer, perhaps, less to any
special game than to the mechanical device of which that game is a
particular instance. The same general device, moreover, may be met with
in widely different games, just as the same operatic air is found in
many different arrangements and variations. What is here of importance
and is retained in the mind, what passes by imperceptible stages from
the games of a child to those of a man, is the mental diagram, the
skeleton outline of the combination, or, if you like, the abstract
formula of which these games are particular illustrations. Take, for
instance, the rolling snow-ball, which increases in size as it moves
along. We might just as well think of toy soldiers standing behind one
another. Push the first and it tumbles down on the second, this latter
knocks down the third, and the state of things goes from bad to worse
until they all lie prone on the floor. Or again, take a house of cards
that has been built up with infinite care: the first you touch seems
uncertain whether to move or not, its tottering neighbour comes to a
quicker decision, and the work of destruction, gathering momentum as it
goes on, rushes headlong to the final collapse.
These instances are all different, but they suggest the same abstract
vision, that of an effect which grows by arithmetical progression, so
that the cause, insignificant at the outset, culminates by a necessary
evolution in a result as important as it is unexpected. Now let us open
a children's picture-book; we shall find this arrangement already on
the high road to becoming comic. Here, for instance--in one of the
comic chap-books picked up by chance--we have a caller rushing
violently into a drawing-room; he knocks against a lady, who upsets her
cup of tea over an old gentleman, who slips against a glass window
which falls in the street on to the head of a constable, who sets the
whole police force agog, etc. The same arrangement reappears in many a
picture intended for grownup persons. In the "stories without words"
sketched by humorous artists we are often shown an object which moves
from place to place, and persons who are closely connected with it, so
that through a series of scenes a change in the position of the object
mechanically brings about increasingly serious changes in the situation