An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit

The French controversialist is a polished swordsman, to be dreaded in his graces and courtesies.  The German is Orson, or the mob, or a marching army, in defence of a good case or a bad—a big or a little.  His irony is a missile of terrific tonnage: sarcasm he emits like a blast from a dragon’s mouth.  He must and will be Titan.  He stamps his foe underfoot, and is astonished that the creature is not dead, but stinging; for, in truth, the Titan is contending, by comparison, with a god.

When the Germans lie on their arms, looking across the Alsatian frontier at the crowds of Frenchmen rushing to applaud L’ami Fritz at the Théâtre Français, looking and considering the meaning of that applause, which is grimly comic in its political response to the domestic moral of the play—when the Germans watch and are silent, their force of character tells.  They are kings in music, we may say princes in poetry, good speculators in philosophy, and our leaders in scholarship.  That so gifted a race, possessed moreover of the stern good sense which collects the waters of laughter to make the wells, should show at a disadvantage, I hold for a proof, instructive to us, that the discipline of the comic spirit is needful to their growth.  We see what they can reach to in that great figure of modern manhood, Goethe.  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.

Modern French comedy is commendable for the directness of the study of actual life, as far as that, which is but the early step in such a scholarship, can be of service in composing and colouring the picture.  A consequence of this crude, though well-meant, realism is the collision of the writers in their scenes and incidents, and in their characters.  The Muse of most of them is an Aventurière.  She is clever, and a certain diversion exists in the united scheme for confounding her.  The object of this person is to reinstate herself in the decorous world; and either, having accomplished this purpose through deceit, she has a nostalgie de la boue, that eventually casts her back into it, or she is exposed in her course of deception when she is about to gain her end.  A very good, innocent young man is her victim, or a very astute, goodish young man obstructs her path.  This latter is enabled to be the champion of the decorous world by knowing the indecorous well.  He has assisted in the progress of Aventurières downward; he will not help them to ascend.  The world is with him; and certainly it is not much of an ascension they aspire to; but what sort of a figure is he?  The triumph of a candid realism is to show him no hero.  You are to admire him (for it must be supposed that realism pretends to waken some admiration) as a credibly living young man; no better, only a little firmer and shrewder, than the rest.  If, however, you think at all, after the curtain has fallen, you are likely to think that the Aventurières have a case to plead against him.  True, and the author has not said anything to the contrary; he has but painted from the life; he leaves his audience to the reflections of unphilosophic minds upon life, from the specimen he has presented in the bright and narrow circle of a spy-glass.

I do not know that the fly in amber is of any particular use, but the Comic idea enclosed in a comedy makes it more generally perceptible and portable, and that is an advantage.  There is a benefit to men in taking the lessons of Comedy in congregations, for it enlivens the wits; and to writers it is beneficial, for they must have a clear scheme, and even if they have no idea to present, they must prove that they have made the public sit to them before the sitting to see the picture.  And writing for the stage would be a corrective of a too-incrusted scholarly style, into which some great ones fall at times.  It keeps minor writers to a definite plan, and to English.  Many of them now swelling a plethoric market, in the composition of novels, in pun-manufactories and in journalism; attached to the machinery forcing perishable matter on a public that swallows voraciously and groans; might, with encouragement, be attending to the study of art in literature.  Our critics appear to be fascinated by the quaintness of our public, as the world is when our beast-garden has a new importation of magnitude, and the creatures appetite is reverently consulted.  They stipulate for a writer’s popularity before they will do much more than take the position of umpires to record his failure or success.  Now the pig supplies the most popular of dishes, but it is not accounted the most honoured of animals, unless it be by the cottager.  Our public might surely be led to try other, perhaps finer, meat.  It has good taste in song.  It might be taught as justly, on the whole, and the sooner when the cottager’s view of the feast shall cease to be the humble one of our literary critics, to extend this capacity for delicate choosing in the direction of the matter arousing laughter.