Essay on Comedy, Comic Spirit | Page 6

of the ex-Huguenot,
Duke de Montausier, {3} for the study of the Misanthrope, and,
according to St. Simon, the Abbe Roquette for Tartuffe), generalized
upon it so as to make it permanently human. Concede that it is natural
for human creatures to live in society, and Alceste is an imperishable
mark of one, though he is drawn in light outline, without any forcible
human colouring. Our English school has not clearly imagined society;

and of the mind hovering above congregated men and women, it has
imagined nothing. The critics who praise it for its downrightness, and
for bringing the situations home to us, as they admiringly say, cannot
but disapprove of Moliere's comedy, which appeals to the individual
mind to perceive and participate in the social. We have splendid
tragedies, we have the most beautiful of poetic plays, and we have
literary comedies passingly pleasant to read, and occasionally to see
acted. By literary comedies, I mean comedies of classic inspiration,
drawn chiefly from Menander and the Greek New Comedy through
Terence; or else comedies of the poet's personal conception, that have
had no model in life, and are humorous exaggerations, happy or
otherwise. These are the comedies of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and
Fletcher. Massinger's Justice Greedy we can all of us refer to a type,
'with fat capon lined' that has been and will be; and he would be comic,
as Panurge is comic, but only a Rabelais could set him moving with
real animation. Probably Justice Greedy would be comic to the
audience of a country booth and to some of our friends. If we have lost
our youthful relish for the presentation of characters put together to fit a
type, we find it hard to put together the mechanism of a civil smile at
his enumeration of his dishes. Something of the same is to be said of
Bobadil, swearing 'by the foot of Pharaoh'; with a reservation, for he is
made to move faster, and to act. The comic of Jonson is a scholar's
excogitation of the comic; that of Massinger a moralist's.
Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the
comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be
found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but
they are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by
great poetic imagination. They are, as it were--I put it to suit my
present comparison--creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled
towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the
narrower world of society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied
troop of Clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen-- marvellous
Welshmen!--Benedict and Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects
of a special study in the poetically comic.
His Comedy of incredible imbroglio belongs to the literary section.
One may conceive that there was a natural resemblance between him
and Menander, both in the scheme and style of his lighter plays. Had

Shakespeare lived in a later and less emotional, less heroical period of
our history, he might have turned to the painting of manners as well as
humanity. Euripides would probably, in the time of Menander, when
Athens was enslaved but prosperous, have lent his hand to the
composition of romantic comedy. He certainly inspired that fine
genius.
Politically it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles
thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze. It was a boon to the comic
poet. He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule passions,
the huge pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes in full
activity; vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, posturers,
extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians,
sonneteering marquises, high-flying mistresses, plain-minded maids,
inter-threading as in a loom, noisy as at a fair. A simply bourgeois
circle will not furnish it, for the middle class must have the brilliant,
flippant, independent upper for a spur and a pattern; otherwise it is
likely to be inwardly dull as well as outwardly correct. Yet, though the
King was benevolent toward Moliere, it is not to the French Court that
we are indebted for his unrivalled studies of mankind in society. For
the amusement of the Court the ballets and farces were written, which
are dearer to the rabble upper, as to the rabble lower, class than
intellectual comedy. The French bourgeoisie of Paris were sufficiently
quick- witted and enlightened by education to welcome great works
like Le Tartuffe, Les Femmes Savantes, and Le Misanthrope, works
that were perilous ventures on the popular intelligence, big vessels to
launch on streams running to shallows. The Tartuffe hove into view as
an enemy's vessel; it offended, not Dieu mais les devots, as the Prince
de Conde explained the cabal raised against