Essay on Comedy, Comic Spirit | Page 4

the other will
think that the speaking of it seriously brings us into violent contrast
with the subject.
Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the
Muses. She was in her origin, short of slaughter, the loudest expression
of the little civilization of men. The light of Athene over the head of
Achilles illuminates the birth of Greek Tragedy. But Comedy rolled in
shouting under the divine protection of the Son of the Wine-jar, as
Dionysus is made to proclaim himself by Aristophanes. Our second
Charles was the patron, of like benignity, of our Comedy of Manners,
which began similarly as a combative performance, under a licence to
deride and outrage the Puritan, and was here and there Bacchanalian
beyond the Aristophanic example: worse, inasmuch as a cynical
licentiousness is more abominable than frank filth. An eminent
Frenchman judges from the quality of some of the stuff dredged up for
the laughter of men and women who sat through an Athenian Comic
play, that they could have had small delicacy in other affairs when they
had so little in their choice of entertainment. Perhaps he does not make
sufficient allowance for the regulated licence of plain speaking proper
to the festival of the god, and claimed by the Comic poet as his
inalienable right, or for the fact that it was a festival in a season of
licence, in a city accustomed to give ear to the boldest utterance of both
sides of a case. However that may be, there can be no question that the
men and women who sat through the acting of Wycherley's Country
Wife were past blushing. Our tenacity of national impressions has
caused the word theatre since then to prod the Puritan nervous system
like a satanic instrument; just as one has known Anti-Papists, for whom
Smithfield was redolent of a sinister smoke, as though they had a later
recollection of the place than the lowing herds. Hereditary Puritanism,
regarding the stage, is met, to this day, in many families quite
undistinguished by arrogant piety. It has subsided altogether as a power

in the profession of morality; but it is an error to suppose it extinct, and
unjust also to forget that it had once good reason to hate, shun, and
rebuke our public shows.
We shall find ourselves about where the Comic spirit would place us, if
we stand at middle distance between the inveterate opponents and the
drum-and-fife supporters of Comedy: 'Comme un point fixe fait
remarquer l'emportement des autres,' as Pascal says. And were there
more in this position, Comic genius would flourish.
Our English idea of a Comedy of Manners might be imaged in the
person of a blowsy country girl--say Hoyden, the daughter of Sir
Tunbelly Clumsy, who, when at home, 'never disobeyed her father
except in the eating of green gooseberries'--transforming to a varnished
City madam; with a loud laugh and a mincing step; the crazy ancestress
of an accountably fallen descendant. She bustles prodigiously and is
punctually smart in her speech, always in a fluster to escape from
Dulness, as they say the dogs on the Nile- banks drink at the river
running to avoid the crocodile. If the monster catches her, as at times he
does, she whips him to a froth, so that those who know Dulness only as
a thing of ponderousness, shall fail to recognise him in that light and
airy shape.
When she has frolicked through her five Acts to surprise you with the
information that Mr. Aimwell is converted by a sudden death in the
world outside the scenes into Lord Aimwell, and can marry the lady in
the light of day, it is to the credit of her vivacious nature that she does
not anticipate your calling her Farce. Five is dignity with a trailing robe;
whereas one, two, or three Acts would be short skirts, and degrading.
Advice has been given to householders, that they should follow up the
shot at a burglar in the dark by hurling the pistol after it, so that if the
bullet misses, the weapon may strike and assure the rascal he has it.
The point of her wit is in this fashion supplemented by the rattle of her
tongue, and effectively, according to the testimony of her admirers. Her
wit is at once, like steam in an engine, the motive force and the warning
whistle of her headlong course; and it vanishes like the track of steam
when she has reached her terminus, never troubling the brains
afterwards; a merit that it shares with good wine, to the joy of the
Bacchanalians. As to this wit, it is warlike. In the neatest hands it is like
the sword of the cavalier in the Mall, quick to flash out upon