Middle Comedy

“ Throughout the fifth century we find political and social comedy flourishing side by side, the great mass of the comedians being equally at home in either branch of the art, while, towards the close of that century and at the beginning of the next, the boundary line between the writers of “Old” and “Middle” Comedy is notoriously a very faint one. ”

“ He has defined Comedy as the contrast of the middle way, the way of common sense, with our human vagaries, "Comme un point fixe fait remarquer l'emportement des autres." Comedy, he says, teaches the world to understand what ails it...."Comedy is the fountain of sound sense," and again, "the use of the true comedy is to awaken thoughtful laughter." ”

“ And the comedy at the close is added by way of counterpiece to the light, delicate fancies of the dream. It is the thoughts we have thought, the painfully-wrought products of the waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the background of nightly visions. ”

“ The modern Comedies have certainly more Wit and Humour in their Composition, than the ancient; more Art in working up, and unravelling their Plots; and a greater Variety of Persons concern'd in them: And especially in genteel Comedy, our Characters have more good Breeding, and Politeness; and even in Low Life, our comical Figures are more ridiculous. ”

“ This was the view of English Comedy of a sagacious essayist, who said that the end of a Comedy would often be the commencement of a Tragedy, were the curtain to rise again on the performers. In those old days female modesty was protected by a fan, behind which, and it was of a convenient semicircular breadth, the ladies present in the theatre retired at a signal of decorum, to peep, covertly askant, or with the option of so peeping, through a prettily fringed eyelet-hole in the eclipsing arch. ”

“ The peculiar quality and charm of our comedy is that, deriving from sources not only distinct, but remote in literary habitat,—scriptural, allegorical, farcical, pastoral, romantic, classical, historical, or purely native and social,—it has not dissipated itself in a thousand streamlets, but has carried down deposits from each tributary at its best. In Love's Labor's Lost, Two Angry Women, As You Like It, Old Wives' Tale, Every Man in His Humour, we find, as in a miner's pan, 'colours' from vastly different soils. ”

“ Ward that the burden of proof is with those who assert that the Latin comedy of the Middle Ages made no impression upon the earlier drama of England. That the former was one of the tributaries of the farce interlude and the principal source of the romantic play of domestic intrigue I have no doubt whatever. And, considering the influx of French clerics and culture during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and the French affiliations of Geoffrey of St. ”

“ Humour, Satire, Irony, pounce on it altogether as their common prey. The Comic spirit eyes but does not touch it. Put into action, it would be farcical. It is too gross for Comedy.
Incidents of a kind casting ridicule on our unfortunate nature instead of our conventional life, provoke derisive laughter, which thwarts the Comic idea. But derision is foiled by the play of the intellect. Most of doubtful causes in contest are open to Comic interpretation, and any intellectual pleading of a doubtful cause contains germs of an Idea of Comedy. ”

“ It is a play of two motives. The first, of course, is love—what else should be the theme of a youthful poet's first comedy?—but love without a trace of passion, almost without deep personal feeling, a love which is half make-believe, tricked out in word-plays. For the second theme of the comedy is language itself, poetic expression—for its own sake—a subject round which all the meditations of the young poet must necessarily have centred, as, in the midst of a cross-fire of new impressions, he set about the formation of a vocabulary and a style. ”

“ In this production of a youth of twenty we may find a foretaste of that keen relish in watching the human comedy, that vigorous scorn of avarice, that infectious laughter at pretentious folly, which accompanied the novelist throughout his life. ”

“ Has he maintained the dignity of the drama? He will answer, "Of course! We are living in the era of progression. Comedy is a success! All the world is laughing! Success! Success! We are superior to those who have gone before! We make the world laugh!" ”

“ In his work, accordingly, we find narratives of single and independent interest, if not exactly plot, and an adaptation of that which is abstract to purposes of amusement. We find characters with motive, and sometimes personality, contemporary manners, witty dialogue, satire; and in at least the Play of Love, an adumbration of the sentimental, dare we say romantic, possibilities of comedy, to be realized when it should lxvii have thrown allegory and scholasticism to the winds. ”

“ It arises out of the circumstance that the writer of prose fiction, by addressing himself to the reflective mood of a solitary reader, and not to the apperceptive attitude of a spectator, will, even in presenting the comic aspects of his subject, unavoidably tend to transcend the standards of fitness adopted by a particular community, substituting for these the ideal standards of a community of the wise and good.
In comedy we have the appeal to laughter in its purity, the child’s laughter at the funny show guided by an intelligent grasp of social customs. ”

“ This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, etc. To this succeeds a state of society from which the same sort of affectation and pretence are banished by a greater knowledge of the world or by their successful exposure on the stage; and which by neutralising the materials of comic character, both natural and artificial, leaves no comedy at all—but the sentimental. Such is our modern comedy. ”

“ Eastward you have total silence of Comedy among a people intensely susceptible to laughter, as the Arabian Nights will testify. Where the veil is over women’s-faces, you cannot have society, without which the senses are barbarous and the Comic spirit is driven to the gutters of grossness to slake its thirst. ”

“ It conducts a romantic intrigue in a realistic fashion through a world of actualities. With the blood of the New Comedy, the Latin Comedy, the Renaissance in its veins, it is far ahead of its English contemporaries, if not of its time. ”

“ Comedy, on the other hand, was tending already, long before the civil troubles, to social satire and the life-like representation of contemporary character and manners, so that prose was its only effective instrument. ”

“ Such were the comic and tragic ingredients of the New Comedy, or Comedy in general. There is yet a third, however, which in itself is neither comic nor tragic, in short, not even poetic. I allude to its portrait-like truthfulness. The ideal and caricature, both in the plastic arts and in dramatic poetry, lay claim to no other truth than that which lies in their significance: their individual beings even are not intended to appear real. Tragedy moves in an ideal, and the Old Comedy in a fanciful or fantastical world. ”

“ They are a growing people; they are conversable as well; and when their men, as in France, and at intervals at Berlin tea-tables, consent to talk on equal terms with their women, and to listen to them, their growth will be accelerated and be shapelier. Comedy, or in any form the Comic spirit, will then come to them to cut some figures out of the block, show them the mirror, enliven and irradiate the social intelligence. ”

“ They are short, not taking much more time than a single act in an ordinary comedy. Yet they have the substance of comedy, in that they give pictures of real life and manners, containing much sprightliness of dialogue, and not a little of humour and character, and varied with amusing incident and allusion drawn fresh from the writer's observation, with the dews of nature upon them. ”

“ The unsuspicious gravity with which they are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered at, the language offering no relief of contrast; and what is much to the credit of the comic sensibility of literature is the fact that, through this general unconsciousness, the ridicule of a thousand authors of comedy perceives the fun, and singles out the familiar thing, and compels that most elaborate dulness to amuse us. ”

“ And herein the proper entertainment, which comic representation, as such, administers to the mind, consists. By turning the thought on event and action, this entertainment is proportionably lessened; that is, the end of comedy is less perfectly attained4. 38
But here, again, though action be not the main object of comedy, yet it is not to be neglected, any more than character in tragedy, but comes in as an useful accessary, or assistant to it. For the manners of men only shew themselves, or shew themselves most usually, in action. ”

“ The idea of the Old Comedy is a fantastic illusion, a pleasant dream, which at last, with the exception of the general effect, all ends in nothing. The New Comedy, on the other hand, is earnest in its form. It rejects every thing of a contradictory nature, which might have the effect of destroying the impressions of reality. It endeavours after strict coherence, and has, in common with Tragedy, a formal complication and dénouement of plot. ”

“ But great comedy, the comedy of Shakespeare or Sterne, not only can be, but must be, taken seriously. There is nothing to which a man must give himself up with more faith and self-abandonment than to genuine laughter. ”

“ An old satire written at the time of the Reformation brings together actors, dustmen, jugglers, conjurers, and sellers of indulgences.
But we want something more than wits and drolleries, and even public performances, to complete our idea of Comedy. We must have literary composition and artistic construction. ”

“ We have so far dwelt on those elements of comedy which seem plainly derivable from simple forms of fun, as seen in child’s play and the laughter of primitive folk. There remains what is in some ways the most interesting feature, the comic presentation of character in action and speech. ”

“ In this kind of way our modern comedy, generally speaking, gives play on the stage to private interests and personalities of the social life I have mentioned in their accidental vagaries, laughable features, abnormal habits and follies, partly by means of character delineation, and partly with the help of comic developments of situations and circumstances. A joviality so frank and genial as that which persists in the Aristophanic comedy as the mediating element of its resolution, does not animate this kind of comedy ”

“ I thought, therefore, it would be an honest ambition to attempt a Comedy which might be no improper entertainment in a Christian commonwealth.
In order to this, the spark of this play is introduced with as much agility and life as he brought with him from France, and as much humour as I could bestow upon him in England. But he uses the advantages of a learned education, a ready fancy, and a liberal fortune, without the circumspection and good sense which should always attend the pleasures of a gentleman; that is to say, a reasonable creature. ”

“ And yet we permit our dramatists a pretty wide range of subjects. We allow the subjects: it is the Congrevean attitude towards them which we should condemn. But the stage would be all the merrier if we could only understand that that attitude is harmless; that to see the humorous aspect of a thing is not to ignore the pathetic or the sociological; and that we should return all the heartier to our serious and sentimental considerations of the problems of life for allowing them to be laughed at for an evening at a comedy. ”

“ Life, we know too well, is not a Comedy, but something strangely mixed; nor is Comedy a vile mask. The corrupted importation from France was noxious; a noble entertainment spoilt to suit the wretched taste of a villanous age; and the later imitations of it, partly drained of its poison and made decorous, became tiresome, notwithstanding their fun, in the perpetual recurring of the same situations, owing to the absence of original study and vigour of conception. ”

“ However that may be, we have as yet invented nothing to surpass the general Victorian satiric philosophy,—that the wisest reaction to life is a high seriousness graced with humor, and the most acceptable attitude toward one’s fellow creatures is a compassionate comprehension of our common tragedy, redeemed from emotionalism by an ironic appreciation of the human comedy. ”

“ The life of the comedy is in the idea. As with the singing of the sky-lark out of sight, you must love the bird to be attentive to the song, so in this highest flight of the Comic Muse, you must love pure Comedy warmly to understand the Misanthrope: you must be receptive of the idea of Comedy. And to love Comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope for good. ”

“ What makes wit an unalloyed pleasure?
QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION Is the serious ending of this Comedy a disappointment? Is seriousness an ending artistically called for by this plot, or only morally called for? Compare with the serious strain in the "Comedie of Errors." What does the contradictory little final dialogue between Winter and Spring add to the significance of the Play? ”

“ Comedy demands action vitalized by a plot that is capable of revealing the social significance of the individual: an action of sufficient scope and reality to display the spirit of society in individual types and manners, or in character and sentiment; a plot sufficiently urgent to interest us, not only in the phenomena, in the concomitants, of every deed, but in its motive and inherent passion. ”