The Comedy of Errors

“ No doubt, wherever the proper tragic enters every thing like irony immediately ceases; but from the avowed raillery of Comedy, to the point where the subjection of mortal beings to an inevitable destiny demands the highest degree of seriousness, there are a multitude of human relations which unquestionably may be considered in an ironical view, without confounding the eternal line of separation between good and evil. ”

“ DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts, and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair. ”

“ Maybe we did good, maybe we were needed—let us think so. Certain it is, many of the old absurdities have disappeared from the Theatre, and our rough-and-ready criticism may have helped the happy dispatch. A folly is often served by an unwise remedy. ”

“ Error succeeds error—outrage follows upon outrage—and bitterness increases like a torrent whose embankments have given way. Who can define the termination of these ravages? Will not the tender and affectionate woman, whose love man may endeavour to stifle by coldness or neglect, perish in the ruin? ”

“ The fools themselves evoke nothing stronger than laughter and contempt. But apparently the hostility awakened by the new departure, and by the combative tone of the Prologue, irritated the poet's own scornful humour, with the result of intensifying his arrogance and hardening his style. Every Man out of his Humour (1599) was hurled at the head of its audience furnished with an induction and running comment, to teach them the proper end of comedy—what to admire, and why. ”

“ But although these errors of reaction are less common than the primary vulgar errors, they are better worth noticing: inasmuch as in many cases they are the errors of the well-intentioned. People fall into the primary vulgar errors without ever thinking of right or wrong: merely feeling an impulse to go there, or to think thus. ”

“ The Untruth, the Error is loudly exploded, that the workers may not be too many; here and there the real truth will be exploded to let a few bold and stiff-necked errors be on show for a time; there is never a lack of “moral idiosyncrasies,”—formerly called rascalities. ”

“ The little errors beget myriads of their kind. "Many mickles make a muckle." The habit sooner or later, leads some of us into an awful abyss, where it had been better we had not lived. Errors creep into character just as ideas get into our brain. ”

“ Any uniformity in good or evil would be the death-blow to that genteel comedy which goes on around us, and whose highest interest very often centres in the surprises we give ourselves by unexpected lines of action and unlooked-for impulses. ”

“ Difference of manner may go for a great deal, but beyond and below the resentment caused by a prompt, decisive, and perhaps imperious tone, lies a deeply-rooted sense of wrong—logically or illogically arrived at. ”

“ Maybe too much experience puts you back where you started from. You've done the wrong thing so many times and profited so many times from your mistakes that you see errors and tragedies in everything. ”

“ A malignant lie, which threatens mischievous consequences, fills us with the highest indignation, and belongs to Tragedy. Why then are cunning and deceit admitted to be excellent as comic motives, so long as they are used with no malicious purpose, but merely to promote our self-love, to extricate one's-self from a dilemma, or to gain some particular object, and from which no dangerous consequences are to be dreaded? ”

“ Every instance we gave of insubordination or disobedience delighted them, while our own blundering attempts to manage the people, the absurd mistakes we fell into, and the endless misconceptions of their character and habits, actually convulsed them with laughter. ”

“ But if vice, divested of disgust and terror, is thus in its own nature ridiculous, we ought not to be surprized if the very same vices which spread horror and desolation thro' the Tragic scene should yet furnish the Comic with its highest laughter and delight, and that tears, and mirth, and even humour and wit itself, should grow from the same root of incongruity: For what is humour in the humourist, but incongruity, whether of sentiment, conduct, or manners? What in the man of humour, but a quick discernment and keen sensibility of these incongruities? ”

“ In general—if I may speak the truth freely—these foolishly-ceremonious usages are such as to turn the mutual relations of respectable citizens into a wearisome comedy. Nay, even into a base comedy, for nobody ever calls anybody a fool or a villain to his face—or if it be done sometimes it is only in an access of that sincerity which we call anger. ”

“ Now, people a degree wiser and more thoughtful than the mass, discover that these vulgar errors are errors. They conclude that their opposites (i. e., the things at the other extremity of the scale) must be right; and by running into the opposite extreme they run just as far wrong upon the other side. There is too great a reaction. ”

“ My own vanity too would be unwilling to enter upon incidents which had their origin either in folly or in error. It is true that those follies and errors have ceased, but their effects remain. With years our faults diminish, but our vices increase. ”

“ But the very same extravagances and showy paradoxes, when caught up by inferior spirits, presently lose their garb, not only of beauty, but of decency, and show themselves in the unpleasing bareness of error. ”

“ When the writers of comedy mix up with their plots incidents which we could not tolerate in virtuous life, and introduce characters in their scenes which we should shun as the corrupters of our manners, and do this to excite ridicule and contempt against the religion of our country by holding pious people up to obloquy, the audience have uniformly exclaimed, 'Ah, ah, so we would have it! ”

“ Now to smile at it, and turn it into ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it. ”

“ The usual Artillery of Ridicule is Wit; whereby the Affinity or Coincidence of any Object with others, which are absurd and contemptible, is unexpectedly exhibited;--There is also another, very forcible, Manner in which Ridicule may act; And that is by employing Humour alone; Thus the Foible or Queerness of any Person will be most fully ridicul'd, by naturally dressing yourself, or any other Person in that Foible, and exerting its full Strength and Vigour.
The Politeness of a Subject is the Freedom of that Subject from all Indelicacy, Aukardness, and Roughness. ”

“ The slightest error of statement in regard to events brings on it the satire of its even more omniscient competitors while the danger of a libel suit lurks in every misstatement in regard to an individual. ”

“ They presented an extraordinary exhibition of awkward genius and blundering sagacity, and exposed themselves at once to the painful ridicule of those whose calling and pursuits taught them to prize mere worldly wisdom above all human lore. ”

“ Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression. ”

“ What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say; for error is ever talkative. ”

“ Thus if any Foible of a Character in real Life is directly attacked, by pointing out the unexpected and ridiculous Affinity it bears to some inanimate Circumstances, this Foible is then ridiculed with Wit, from the Comparison which is made.--At the same time, as the whimsical Oddity of a Character in real Life is the Ground of the whole, there is also Humour contain'd in the Attack. ”

“ And, even had we heard these things, it would have been difficult for us to have thus suddenly realized that, in a single year, human folly and human madness had so completely got the better of right and reason. ”

“ Of course a mass of absurdities would grow up around the central germ and a multitude of horrors sprout forth. While the common throng would unquestioningly receive all these ridiculous and revolting particulars, they could not but provoke doubt, satire, flat rejection, from the bolder and keener wits. ”

“ We have sunk so low now that we try to act our exaggerations, and to live up to our lies. We call it "keeping up appearances;" and no more bitter phrase could, perhaps, have been invented to describe our childish folly. ”

“ There were none of them which could be ascribed to any worse motive than a wicked wit, and many of the individuals against whom they were directed were worthy of more severe chastisement. The blame was in meddling with such men at all. ”

“ Some satirical wits and humourists, like their father Lucian, laugh at every thing indiscriminately; which betrays such a poverty of wit, as cannot afford to part with any thing; and such a want of virtue, as to postpone it to a jest. Such writers encourage vice and folly, which they pretend to combat, by setting them on an equal foot with better things: and while they labour to bring every thing into contempt, how can they expect their own parts should escape? ”

“ A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society, making it possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit. ”

“ The difficulty lies chiefly in the temptation to overemphasize. In striving to make the story humorous, one goes too far, oversteps the limits of dignity, and like the ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville actor, [Pg 225] produces an effect of disgust. ”

“ And here must I venture through all the Barricadoes and the Fortifications of popular Resentment; but Satires, like Incision, become necessary when the Humour rankles, and the Wound threatens Mortification; when Advice ceases to work; when Loss, Experience, and Disaster will not convince, then Satire reforms, by making the Error we embrace ridiculous: Shame works to make us forsake a Thing, [Pg x] which Instruction augments, or Persuasion could have no Effect upon.
Many and great Abuses, and of the last Importance to the People, have urged my Duty and demanded my Assistance ”

“ By the exhibition of folly and vice, in the persons of the actors and actresses, who are held up to ridicule and censure, a moral effect is produced on the audience, who retire from such a scene, where the absurdities of the human character have been exhibited to their view, infinitely more disgusted by them, than they ever felt when listening to the grave lecture of censure or condemnation from the pulpit. ”

“ I assure you, Sir Paul, I laugh at nobody’s jest but my own, or a lady’s, I assure you, Sir Paul.
BRISK. How? how, my lord? what, affront my wit! Let me perish, do I never say anything worthy to be laughed at?
LORD FROTH. Oh, foy, don’t misapprehend me; I don’t say so, for I often smile at your conceptions. But there is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh; ’tis such a vulgar expression of the passion; everybody can laugh. Then especially to laugh at the jest of an inferior person, or when anybody else of the same quality does not laugh with one—ridiculous! ”

“ Sir Thomas Hammer reads, folly shewn. [The sense is, But wise men's folly, when it is once fallen into extravagance, overpowers their discretion. Revisal.] I explain it thus. The folly which he shows with proper adaptation to persons and times, is fit, has its propriety, and therefore produces no censure; but the folly of wise men when it falls or happens, taints their wit, destroys the reputation of their judgment. ”

“ There is nothing finer than the way in which these outlying pickets of civilisation distil a grim humour out of their desolate situation, and turn not only a bold, but a laughing face upon the chances which their lives may bring. ”

“ One error, alone, is sufficient to infect the whole mass of the mind, and produce an infinity of capricious, monstrous, notions.—Every vice is the error of the understanding; crimes and prejudices are brothers; truth and virtue sisters. These things, known to the wise, are hid from fools!'
Without a sufficiently interesting pursuit, a fatal torpor stole over my spirits—my blood circulated languidly through my veins. Montague, in the intervals from business and amusement, continued to visit me. ”

“ We may err, as all human beings err. But the continual holding up to us of our mistakes—perhaps they are worse than mistakes—does not help us to see things more distinctly. We should prefer to see wherein we err. ”

“ But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur among us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? ”

“ Comedy, on the other hand, believes that the incongruities and imperfections of life can be justified, and have their uses. Firmly convinced of the might of truth, it holds that the folly and aberrations of men, their shortcomings and failings, cannot impede its eventual victory. ”

“ A gross impropriety is punished with contempt and indignation, which are vented against the offender by every external expression that can gratify these passions. And even the slightest impropriety raises some degree of contempt. But there are improprieties, generally of the slighter kind, that provoke laughter; of which we have examples without end in the blunders and absurdities of our own species. ”