Comedy of manners

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But as they vary in function and result, so these kinds of comedy differ in the quality of action which each may present. The play of convention and manners can use only the externals of action, actions that neither strike deep nor spring from the depths, for such a play aims to reproduce appearances or merely to re-create them—to criticise and correct rather than construct. The play of character and passion, not the so-called realistic, but idealistic, selects for presentation actions whose springs are in the inner life ”

“ Satiric comedy, or comedy of manners, is the art of making ludicrous in dramatic form some phase of life. The writers of our old comedy thought that certain vices—gambling, adultery, and the like—formed a phase of life which for divers reasons, essential and accidental, lent itself best to their purpose. They may, or may not, have thought they were doing society a service: their real justification is that, as artists, they had to take for their art that material they could use best. They used it according to their lights: Wycherley with a coarse and heavy hand, so that it became nauseous ”

“ Inferior personages, acting with less reserve and caution, afford the fittest occasion to the poet of expressing their genuine tempers and dispositions. Or, if a picture of the manners be expected from the introduction of great persons, it can be only in tragedy, where the importance of the interests and the strong play of the passions strip them of their borrowed disguises, and lay open their true characters. So that the princely, or heroic, comedy is the least fitted, of any kind of drama, to furnish this pleasure. ”

“ The comedy of external life may present, by means of typical individuals and conventional manners, a reflex of that which is actual, or a criticism of it; and such a play will be realistic or satirical. The comedy of the inner life, on the other hand, since it reveals the characteristics of humanity in the heat and moment of passion, may present a vision of the ideal made concrete ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical, commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed with impartiality than its weakness is discovered. ”

“ Speaking in the first person, the simplest means appears to be to study those whose profession it is to describe the society of the time, and primarily, therefore, the works of dramatic writers, who are supposed to draw a faithful picture of it. So we go to the theatre, and usually derive keen pleasure therefrom. But is pleasure all that we expect to find? What we should look for above everything in a comedy or a drama is a representation, exact as possible, of the manners and characters of the dramatis persona of the play ”

“ There are two ways of presenting a character study of the uncultivated types of civilized humanity. One is faithfully to imitate the original, sparing not in the least vulgarity, uncouthness, and coarseness. The comedy in this method is the crude product of incongruity and contrast. The second method is merely to retain a recognizable likeness to the original, to tone down the vulgarity, to reduce the uncouthness to a suggestion, and to rely for effect on an heightened sense of humor. ”

“ But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of the vis comica, upon which he rubs along pleasantly enough, hospitably entertaining not a few congenial spirits who can put up with him as they find him, relish his simple and often racy fare, and enjoy a decent quantum of jokes of his own growing, without pining after the brilliant banquets of comedy spread by opulent barons of the realm. ”

“ Such are both the penalties and the profits of that obsession by the sense of an ampler comedy in human things—latent and a little lost, but all responsive to the interested squeeze, to the roused passion of pursuit—than even quite expert and anxious preliminaries of artistic relation to any theme may always be trusted to give the measure of. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Building upon this sure foundation, a class of comedians sprang up who "worked up" the laughter by taking advantage of the human delight in expectation. For instance: A man would lean over a wall and gaze at some distant scene. He was perfectly oblivious to what was going on behind him. The comedy character strolled out on the stage with a stick in his hand. ”

“ Well, if there were as much color, adventure, and excellent broad comedy in the bar-room as in the best of these stories a lady might even forgive the profanity and the filthy floor. And you must remember that life, for all the realists may say, is not literature. We take our broad comedy, selected and arranged, from an author. Life is like a variety show; we sit through a deal of vulgar stupidity for the sake of a laugh or two. ”

“ As then Comedy must place the spectator in a point of view altogether different from that of moral appreciation, with what right can moral instruction be demanded of Comedy, with what ground can it be expected? ”

“ 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. ”

“ An absolutely good, or an absolutely bad, character is foreign to the purpose of each. And the reason is, 1, That such a representation is improbable. And probability constitutes, as we have seen, the very essence of comedy; and is the medium, through which tragedy is enabled most powerfully to affect us. 2. Such characters are improper to comedy, because, as was hinted above, they turn the attention aside from contemplating the expression of them, which we call humour. ”

“ In comedy we have a vision of the victory of the intrinsically assured stability of the wholly personal soul-life, the laughter of which resolves everything through the medium and into the medium of such life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Comedy, both ancient and modern, is full of trickery and dupery. A whole play may be one big piece of fooling, ending for the most part in a merry scene in which the deluded victim or victims come to their senses again. The spectator, who is in the secret, enjoys sympathetically the laughter of the plot-maker. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The best and most genuine kind of comedy, because the most dramatic, is that of character or humour, in which the persons introduced upon the stage are left to betray their own folly by their words and actions. ”

“ It is not within my province to pass a judgment upon their analytical study of all that is gross in human nature. But, from a philological point of view, the men and women whom they place as actors on the stage of their human comedy are interesting, whatever they may be in other respects. ”

“ Any uniformity in good or evil would be the deathblow 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. ”

“ For the rest, the man had a striking countenance, rugged, and rather ugly than otherwise, but by no means unprepossessing; full of lines and wrinkles and strong muscle, with large lips of wondrous pliancy, and an aspect of wistful sagacity, that, no doubt, on occasion could become exquisitely comic,—dry comedy,—the comedy that makes others roar when the comedian himself is as grave as a judge. ”

“ Thus the proud man, the vain, the sanguine, the splenetic, the suspicious, the covetous, the lavish, and so forth, are a sort of abstract characters which divide the whole human race amongst them. Now there are, belonging to all these, objects of ridicule which it has been the business of Comedy to exhibit; and though, perhaps, no one individual of each class perfectly resembled the person held to view on the stage, yet if all the circumstances exhibited are contained in the general character, it appears sufficiently natural. ”

“ Generosity, enthusiasm, sensibility, true and ready sympathy—all are taken, leaving the man, in many instances nothing but a skilful actor, who apes all the emotions while feeling none. And the comedy is none the less repugnant to me because it is played through with a solemn face, and the actors are richly recompensed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Common life distorted, or what we call farce, gives the entertainment of ridicule more perfectly than comedy. The only pleasure, which an exposition of ordinary life affords, distinct from that we receive from a view of high life on the one hand, and ordinary life disfigured on the other, is the satisfaction of contemplating the truth of character. However 81 then this species of representation may be improved by incorporating other kinds of excellence with it, is not this, of pleasing by the truth of character, to be considered as the appropriate end of comedy? ”