last few examples are illustrations of a great cause resulting in a small effect, we quoted others, immediately before, which might be defined inversely as a great effect springing from a small cause. The truth is, this second definition has scarcely more validity than the first. Lack of proportion between cause and effect, whether appearing in one or in the other, is never the direct source of laughter. What we do laugh at is something that this lack of proportion may in certain cases disclose, namely, a particular mechanical arrangement which it reveals to us, as through a glass, at the back of the series of effects and causes. Disregard this arrangement, and you let go the only clue capable of guiding you through the labyrinth of the comic. Any hypothesis you otherwise would select, while possibly applicable to a few care¬ fully chosen cases, is liable at any moment to be met and overthrown by the first unsuitable instance that comes along.
But why is it we laugh at this mechanical arrangement? It is doubtless strange that the history of a person or of a group should some¬ times appear like a game worked by strings, or gearings, or springs; but from what source does ii THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 87 the special character of this strangeness arise? What is it that makes it laughable? To this question, which we have already propounded in various forms, our answer must always be the same. The rigid mechanism which we occasionally detect, as a foreign body, in the living continuity of human affairs is of peculiar interest to us as being a kind of absentminded¬ ness on the part of life. Were events un¬ ceasingly mindful of their own course, there would be no coincidences, no conjunctures and no circular series; everything would evolve and progress continuously. And were all men always attentive to life, were we constantly keeping in touch with others as well as with ourselves, nothing within us would ever appear as due to the working of strings or springs. The comic is that side of a person which reveals his likeness to a thing, that aspect of human events which, through its peculiar inelasticity, conveys the impression of pure mechanism, of automatism, of movement without life. Consequently it expresses an individual or collective imperfection which calls for an immediate corrective. This cor¬ rective is laughter, a social gesture that singles 88 LAUGHTER CHAP.
out and represses a special kind of absent- mindedness in men and in events.
But this in turn tempts us to make further investigations. So far, we have spent our time in rediscovering, in the diversions of the grown¬ up man, those mechanical combinations which amused him as a child. Our methods, in fact, have been entirely empirical. Let us now attempt to frame a full and methodical theory, by seeking, as it were, at the fountain-head, the changeless and simple archetypes of the manifold and transient practices of the comic stage. Comedy, we said, combines events so as to introduce mechanism into the outer forms of life. Let us now ascertain in what essential characteristics life, when viewed from without, seems to contrast with mere mechanism. We shall only have, then, to turn to the opposite characteristics, in order to discover the abstract formula, this time a general and complete one, for every real and possible method of comedy.
Life presents itself to us as evolution in time and complexity in space. Regarded in time, it is the continuous evolution of a being ever growing older; it never goes backwards and never repeats anything. Considered in n THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 89 space, it exhibits certain coexisting elements so closely interdependent, so exclusively made for one another, that not one of them could, at the same time, belong to two different organisms: each living being is a closed system of pheno¬ mena, incapable of interfering with other systems. A continual change of aspect, the irreversibility of the order of phenomena, the perfect individuality of a perfectly self-contained series: such, then, are the outward charac¬ teristics — whether real or apparent is of little moment — which distinguish the living from the merely mechanical. Let us take the counter¬ part of each of these: we shall obtain three processes which might be called repetition, inversion, and reciprocal interference of series. Now, it is easy to see that these are also the methods of light comedy, and that no others are possible.
As a matter of fact, we could discover them, as ingredients of varying importance, in the composition of all the scenes we have just been considering, and, a fortiori, in the children’s games, the mechanism of which they reproduce. The requisite analysis would, however, delay us too long, and it is more profitable to study LAUGHTER CHAP.
90 them in their purity by taking fresh examples. Nothing could be easier, for it is in their pure state that they are found both in classic comedy and in contemporary plays.
1. Repetition. — Our present problem no longer deals, like the preceding one, with a word or a sentence repeated by an individual, but rather with a situation, that is, a combina¬ tion of circumstances, which recurs several times in its original form and thus contrasts with the changing stream of life. Everyday experience supplies us with this type of the comic, though only in a rudimentary state. Thus, you meet a friend in the street whom you have not seen for an age; there is nothing comic in the situation. If, however, you meet him again the same day, and then a third and a fourth time, you may laugh at the “ coincid¬ ence.” Now, picture to yourself a series of imaginary events which affords a tolerably fair illusion of life, and within this ever -moving series imagine one and the same scene repro¬ duced either by the same characters or by different ones: again you will have a coincid¬ ence, though a far more extraordinary one.
n THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 91 Such are the repetitions produced on the stage. They are the more laughable in proportion as the scene repeated is more complex and more naturally introduced — two conditions which seem mutually exclusive, and which the play- writer must be clever enough to reconcile.
Contemporary light comedy employs this method in every shape and form. One of the best -known examples consists in bringing a group of characters, act after act, into the most varied surroundings, so as to reproduce, under ever fresh circumstances, one and the same series of incidents or accidents more or less symmetrically identical.
In several of Moliere’s plays we find one and the same arrangement of events repeated right through the comedy from beginning to end. Thus, the £cole des femmes does nothing more than reproduce and repeat a single in¬ cident in three tempi: first tempo, Horace tells Arnolphe of the plan he has devised to deceive Agn&s’s guardian, who turns out to be Arnolphe himself; second tempo, Arnolphe thinks he has checkmated the move; third tempo, Agn&s con¬ trives that Horace gets all the benefit of Arnolphe’s precautionary measures. There is 92 LAUGHTER chap.
92 LAUGHTER chap.
the same symmetrical repetition in the Ecole des maris, in L' Jiiourdi, and above all in George Dandin, where the same effect in three tempi is again met with: first tempo, George Dandin discovers that his wife is unfaithful; second tempo, he summons his father- and mother-in-law to his assistance; third tempo, it is George Dandin himself, after all, who has to apologise.
At times the same scene is reproduced with groups of different characters. Then it not infrequently happens that the first group con¬ sists of masters and the second of servants. The latter repeat in another key a scene already played by the former, though the rendering is naturally less refined. A part of the Ddpit amoureux is constructed on this plan, as is also Amphitryon. In an amusing little comedy of Benedix, Der Eigensinn, the order is inverted: we have the masters repro¬ ducing a scene of stubbornness in which their servants have set the example.
But, quite irrespective of the characters who serve as pegs for the arrangement of symmetrical situations, there seems to be a wide gulf between classic comedy and the II THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 93 theatre of to-day. Both aim at introducing a certain mathematical order into events, while none the less maintaining their aspect of likeli¬ hood, that is to say, of life. But the means they employ are different The majority of light comedies of our day seek to mesmerise directly the mind of the spectator. For, how¬ ever extraordinary the coincidence, it becomes acceptable from the very fact that it is accepted; and we do accept it, if we have been gradually prepared for its reception. Such is often the procedure adopted by contemporary authors. In Moliere’s plays, on the contrary, it is the moods of the persons on the stage, not of the audience, that make repetition seem natural. Each of the characters represents a certain force applied in a certain direction, and it is because these forces, constant in direction, necessarily combine together in the same way, that the same situation is reproduced. Thus interpreted, the comedy of situation is akin to the comedy of character. It deserves to be called classic, if classic art is indeed that which does not claim to derive from the effect more * than it has put into the cause.
94 LAUGHTER CHAP.
2. Inversion. — This second method has so much analogy with the first that we will merely define it without insisting on illustrations. Picture to yourself certain characters in a certain situation: if you reverse the situation and invert the r$les, you obtain a comic scene. The double rescue scene in Le Voyage de M. Perrichon belongs to this class.1 There is no necessity, however, for both the identical scenes to be played before us. We may be shown only one, provided the other is really in our minds. Thus, we laugh at the prisoner at the bar lec¬ turing the magistrate; at a child presuming to teach its parents; in a word, at everything that comes under the heading of “ topsyturvydom.”
Not infrequently comedy sets before us a character who lays a trap in which he is the first to be caught. The plot of the villain who is the victim of his own villainy, or the cheat cheated, forms the stock-in-trade of a good many plays. We find this even in primitive farce. Lawyer Pathelin tells his client of a trick to outwit the magistrate; the client employs the self-same trick to avoid paying the lawyer. A termagant of a wife insists 1 Labiche, Le Voyage de M. Perrichon.
ii THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 95 upon her husband doing all the housework; she has put down each separate item on a “rota.” Now let her fall into a copper, her husband will refuse to drag her out, for “ that is not down on his ‘rota.’” In modern litera¬ ture we meet with hundreds of variations on the theme of the robber robbed. In every case the root idea involves an inversion of rSles, and a situation which recoils on the head of its author.
Here we apparently find the confirmation of a law, some illustrations of which we have already pointed out. When a comic scene has been reproduced a number of times, it reaches the stage of being a classical type or model. It becomes amusing in itself, quite apart from the causes which render it amusing. Henceforth, new scenes, which are not comic de jure, may become amusing de facto, on account of their partial resemblance to this model. They call up in our mind a more or less confused image which we know to be comical. They range themselves in a category representing an officially recognised type of the comic. The scene of the “ robber robbed ” belongs to this class. It casts over a host of other scenes a reflection of the comic element LAUGHTER CHAP.
96 it contains. In the end it renders comic any mishap that befalls one through one’s own fault, no matter what the fault or mishap may be, — nay, an allusion to this mishap, a single word that recalls it, is sufficient. There would be nothing amusing in the saying, “ It serves you right, George Dandin,” were it not for the comic overtones that take up and re-echo it.
3. We have dwelt at considerable length on repetition and inversion; we now come to the reciprocal interference 1 of series. This is a comic effect, the precise formula of which is very difficult to disentangle, by reason of the extraordinary variety of forms in which it appears on the stage. Perhaps it might be defined as follows: A situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time.
You will at once think of an equivocal situation. And the equivocal situation is indeed one which permits of two different 1 The word “interfeience” has here the meaning given to it in Optics, where it indicates the partial superposition and neutralisation, by each other, of two senes of light- waves.
n THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 97 meanings at the same time, the one merely plausible, which is put forward by the actors, the other a real one, which is given by the public. We see the real meaning of the situation, because care has been taken to show us every aspect of it; but each of the actors knows only one of these aspects: hence the mistakes they make and the erroneous judgments they pass both on what is going on around them and on what they are doing themselves. We proceed from this erroneous judgment to the correct one, we waver between the possible meaning and the real, and it is this mental seesaw between two contrary in¬ terpretations which is at first apparent in the enjoyment we derive from an equivocal situation. It is natural that certain philosophers should have been specially struck by this mental in¬ stability, and that some of them should regard the very essence of the ludicrous as consisting in the collision or coincidence of two judgments that contradict each other. Their definition, however, is far from meeting every case, and even when it does, it defines — not the principle of the ludicrous, but only one of its more or less distant consequences. Indeed, it is easy LAUGHTER CHAP.
98 to see that the stage-made misunderstanding is nothing but a particular instance of a far more general phenomenon, — the reciprocal in¬ terference of independent series, and that, moreover, it is not laughable in itself, but only as a sign of such an interference.
As a matter of fact, each of the characters in every stage-made misunderstanding has his setting in an appropriate series of events which he correctly interprets as far as he is concerned, and which give the key-note to his words and actions. Each of the series peculiar to the several characters develop independently, but at a certain moment they meet under such conditions that the actions and words that belong to one might just as well belong to another. Hence arise the misunderstandings and the equivocal nature of the situation. But this latter is not laughable in itself, it is so only because it reveals the coincidence of the two independent series. The proof of this lies in the fact that the author must be con¬ tinually taxing his ingenuity to recall our attention to the double fact of independence and coincidence. This he generally succeeds in doing by constantly renewing the vain ii THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS 99 threat of dissolving partnership between the two coinciding series. Every moment the whole thing threatens to break down, but manages to get patched up again; it is this diversion that excites laughter, far more than the oscillation of the mind between two con¬ tradictory ideas. It makes us laugh because it reveals to us the reciprocal interference of two independent series, the real source of the comic effect.
And so the stage-made misunderstanding is nothing more than one particular instance, one means — perhaps the most artificial — of illustrating the reciprocal interference of series, but it is not the only one. Instead of two contemporary series, you might take one series of events belonging to the past and another belonging to the present: if the two series happen to coincide in our imagination, there will be no resulting cross-purposes, and yet the same comic effect will continue to take place. Think of Bonivard, captive in the Castle of Chillon: one series of facts. Now picture to yourself Tartarin, travelling in Switzerland, arrested and imprisoned: second series, independent of the former. Now let 100 LAUGHTER CHAP.
Tartarin be manacled to Bonivard’s chain, thus making the two stories seem for a moment to coincide, and you will get a very amusing scene, one of the most amusing that Daudet’s imagination has pictured.1 Numerous incidents of the mock-heroic style, if analysed, would reveal the same elements. The transposition from the ancient to the modern — always a laughable one — draws its inspiration from the same idea.
Labiche has made use of this method in every shape and form. Sometimes he begins by building up the series separately, and then delights in making them interfere with one another: he takes an independent group — a wedding-party, for instance — and throws them into altogether unconnected surroundings, into which certain coincidences allow of their being foisted for the time being. Sometimes he keeps one and the same set of characters right through the play, but contrives that certain of these characters have something to conceal — have, in fact, a secret understanding on the point — in short, play a smaller comedy within the principal one: at one moment, one of the 1 Tartarin sur les Alfiesy by Daudet II THE COMIC IN SITUATIONS xoi two comedies is on the point of upsetting the other; the next, everything comes right and the coincidence between the two series is restored. Sometimes, even, he introduces into the actual series a purely immaterial series of events, an inconvenient past, for instance, that some one has an interest in concealing, but which is continually cropping up in the present, and on each occasion is successfully brought into line with situations with which it seemed destined to play havoc. But in every case we find the two independent series, and also their partial coincidence.
We will not carry any further this analysis of the methods of light comedy. Whether we find reciprocal interference of series, inversion, or repetition, we see that the objective is always the same — to obtain what we have called a mechanisation of life. You take a set of actions and relations and repeat it as it is, or turn it upside down, or transfer it bodily to another set with which it partially coincides — all these being processes that consist in looking upon life as a repeating mechanism, with reversible action and interchangeable parts. Actual life is comedy just so far as it 102 LAUGHTER CHAP.
produces, in a natural fashion, actions of the same kind, — consequently, just so far as it forgets itself, for were it always on the alert, it would be ever-changing continuity, irre- vertible progress, undivided unity. And so the ludicrous in events may be defined as absentmindedness in things, just as the ludi¬ crous in an individual character always results from some fundamental absentmindedness in the person, as we have already intimated and shall prove later on. This absentmindedness in events, however, is exceptional. Its results are slight. At any rate it is incurable, so that it is useless to laugh at it. Therefore the idea would never have occurred to any one of ex¬ aggerating that absentmindedness, of convert¬ ing it into a system and creating an art for it, if laughter were not always a pleasure and man¬ kind did not pounce upon the slightest excuse for indulging in it This is the real explanation of light comedy, which holds the same relation to actual life as does a jointed dancing-doll to a man walking, — being, as it is, an artificial exaggeration of a natural rigidity in things. The thread that binds it to actual life is a very fragile one. It is scarcely more than a game II THE COMIC IN WORDS 103 which, like all games, depends on a previously accepted convention. Comedy in character strikes far deeper roots into life. With that kind of comedy we shall deal more particularly in the final portion of our investigation. But we must first analyse a certain type of the comic, in many respects similar to that of light comedy: the comic in words.
II There may be something artificial in making a special category for the comic in words, since most of the varieties of the comic that we have examined so far were produced through the medium of language. We must make a dis¬ tinction, however, between the comic expressed and the comic created by language. The former could, if necessary, be translated from one language into another, though at the cost of losing the greater portion of its significance when introduced into a fresh society different in manners, in literature, and above all in associa¬ tion of ideas. But it is generally impossible to translate the latter. It owes its entire being to the structure of the sentence or to the choice of 104 LAUGHTER CHAP.
the words. It does not set forth, by means of language, special cases of absentmindedness in man or in events. It lays stress on lapses of attention in language itself. In this case, it is language itself that becomes comic.
Comic sayings, however, are not a matter of spontaneous generation; if we laugh at them, we are equally entitled to laugh at their author. This latter condition, however, is not indis¬ pensable, since the saying or expression has a comic virtue of its own. This is proved by the fact that we find it very difficult, in the majority of these cases, to say whom we are laughing at, although at times we have a dim, vague feeling that there is some one in the background.
Moreover, the person implicated is not always the speaker. Here it seems as though we should draw an important distinction between the witty ( spiritue l) and the comic. A word is said to be comic when it makes us laugh at the person who utters it, and witty when it makes us laugh either at a third party or at ourselves. But in most cases we can hardly make up our minds whether the word is comic or witty. All that we can say is that it is laughable.
n THE COMIC IN WORDS 105 Before proceeding, it might be well to examine more closely what is meant by wit {esprit'). A witty saying makes us at least smile; consequently, no investigation into laughter would be complete did it not get to the bottom of the nature of wit and throw light on the underlying idea. It is to be feared, however, that this extremely subtle essence is one that evaporates when exposed to the light.
Let us first make a distinction between the two meanings of the word wit {esprit), the broader one and the more restricted. In the broader meaning of the word, it would seem that what is called wit is a certain dramatic way of thinking. Instead of treating his ideas as mere symbols, the wit sees them, he hears them and, above all, makes them converse with one another like persons. He puts them on the stage, and himself, to some extent, into the bargain. A witty nation is, of necessity, a nation enamoured of the theatre. In every wit there is something of a poet — just as in every good reader there is the making of an actor. This comparison is made purposely, because a proportion might easily be established 106 LAUGHTER cm.
106 LAUGHTER cm.
between the four terms. In order to read well we need only the intellectual side of the actor’s art; but in order to act well one must be an actor in all one’s soul and body. In just the same way, poetic creation calls for some degree of self-forgetfulness, whilst the wit does not usually err in this respect. We always get a glimpse of the latter behind what he says and does. He is not wholly engrossed in the business, because he only brings his intelligence into play.
So any poet may reveal himself as a wit when he pleases. To do this there will be no need for him to acquire anything; it seems rather as though he would have to give up something. He would simply have to let his ideas hold converse with one another “ for nothing, for the mere joy of the thing! ” 1 He would only have to unfasten the double bond which keeps his ideas in touch with his feelings and his soul in touch with life. In short, he would turn into a wit by simply resolving to be no longer a poet in feeling, but only in intelligence.
1 “Pour rien, pour le plaisir” is a quotation from Victor Hugo’s Marion Delorme.
II THE COMIC IN WORDS 107 But if wit consists, for the most part, in seeing things sub specie theatri, it is evidently capable of being specially directed to one variety of dramatic art, namely, comedy. Here we have a more restricted meaning of the term, and, moreover, the only one that interests us from the point of view of the theory of laughter. What is here called wit is a gift for dashing off comic scenes in a few strokes — dashing them off, however, so subtly, delicately and rapidly, that all is over as soon as we begin to notice them.
Who are the actors in these scenes? With whom has the wit to deal? First of all, with his interlocutors themselves, when his witticism is a direct retort to one of them. Often with an absent person whom he supposes to have spoken and to whom he is replying. Still oftener, with the whole world, — in the ordinary meaning of the term, — which he takes to task, twisting a current idea into a paradox, or mak¬ ing use of a hackneyed phrase, or parodying some quotation or proverb. If we compare these scenes in miniature with one another, we find they are almost always variations of a comic theme with which we are well io8 io8 LAUGHTER CHAP.
acquainted, that of the “robber robbed.” You take up a metaphor, a phrase, an argument, and turn it against the man who is, or might be, its author, so that he is made to say what he did not mean to say and lets himself be caught, to some extent, in the toils of lan¬ guage. But the theme of the “robber robbed ” is not the only possible one. We have gone over many varieties of the comic, and there is not one of them that is incapable of being volatilised into a witticism.
Every witty remark, then, lends itself to an analysis, whose chemical formula, so to say, we are now in a position to state. It runs as follows: Take the remark, first enlarge it into a regular scene, then find out the category of the comic to which the scene evidently belongs: by this means you reduce the witty remark to its simplest elements and obtain a full explanation of it.
Let us apply this method to a classic ex¬ ample. “Your chest hurts me” ( J'ai mal d votre poitrine), wrote Mme. de Sdvignd to her ailing daughter — clearly a witty saying. If our theory is correct, we need only lay stress upon the saying, enlarge and magnify it, and II THE COMIC IN WORDS 109 we shall see it expand into a comic scene. Now, we find this very scene, ready made, in the Amour midecin of Moliere. The sham doctor, Clitandre, who has been summoned to attend Sganarelle’s daughter, contents himself with feeling Sganarelle’s own pulse, where¬ upon, relying on the sympathy there must be between father and daughter, he unhesitatingly concludes: “Your daughter is very ill!” Here we have the transition from the witty to the comical. To complete our analysis, then, all we have to do is to discover what there is comical in the idea of giving a diagnosis of the child after sounding the father or the mother. Well, we know that one essential form of comic fancy lies in picturing to ourselves a living person as a kind of jointed dancing -doll, and that frequently, with the object of inducing us to form this mental picture, we are shown two or more persons speaking and acting as though attached to one another by invisible strings. Is not this the idea here suggested when we are led to materialise, so to speak, the sym¬ pathy we postulate as existing between father and daughter?
We now see how it is that writers on wit no LAUGHTER CHAP.
have perforce confined themselves to comment¬ ing on the extraordinary complexity of the things denoted by the term without ever suc¬ ceeding in defining it. There are many ways of being witty, almost as many as there are of being the reverse. How can we detect what they have in common with one another, unless we first determine the general relationship between the witty and the comic? Once, however, this relationship is cleared up, every¬ thing is plain sailing. We then find the same connection between the comic and the witty as exists between a regular scene and the fugitive suggestion of a possible one. Hence, however numerous the forms assumed by the comic, wit will possess an equal number of corresponding varieties. So that the comic, in all its forms, is what should be defined first, by discovering (a task which is already quite difficult enough) the clue that leads from one form to the other. By that very operation wit will have been analysed, and will then appear as nothing more than the comic in a highly volatile state. To follow the opposite plan, however, and attempt directly to evolve a formula for wit, would be courting II THE COMIC IN WORDS in certain failure. What should we think of a chemist who, having ever so many jars of a certain substance in his laboratory, would pre¬ fer getting that substance from the atmosphere, in which merely infinitesimal traces of its vapour are to be found?
But this comparison between the witty and the comic is also indicative of the line we must take in studying the comic in words. On the one hand, indeed, we find there is no essential difference between a word that is comic and one that is witty; on the other hand, the latter, although connected with a figure of speech, in¬ variably calls up the image, dim or distinct, of a comic scene. This amounts to saying that the comic in speech should correspond, point by point, with the comic in actions and in situations, and is nothing more, if one may so express oneself, than their projection on to the plane of words. So let us return to the comic in actions and in situations, consider the chief methods by which it is obtained, and apply them to the choice of words and the building up of sentences. We shall thus have every possible form of the comic in words as well as every variety of wit.
1 12 LAUGHTER CHAP.
i. Inadvertently to say or do what we have no intention of saying or doing, as a result of inelasticity or momentum, is, as we are aware, one of the main sources of the comic. Thus, absentmindedness is essentially laughable, and so we laugh at anything rigid, ready-made, mechanical in gesture, attitude and even facial expression. Do we find this kind of rigidity in language also? No doubt we do, since lan¬ guage contains ready-made formulas and stereo¬ typed phrases. The man who always expressed himself in such terms would invariably be comic. But if an isolated phrase is to be comic in itself, when once separated from the person who utters it, it must be something more than ready-made, it must bear within itself some sign which tells us, beyond the possibility of doubt, that it was uttered automatically. This can only happen when the phrase embodies some evident ab¬ surdity, either a palpable error or a contradic¬ tion in terms. Hence the following general rule: A comic meaning is invariably obtained when an absurd idea is fitted into a well-estab¬ lished phrase-form.
“ Ce sabre est le plus beau jour de ma vie,” said M. Prudhomme. Translate the phrase II THE COMIC IN WORDS 113 into English or German and it becomes purely absurd, though it is comic enough in French. The reason is that “ le plus beau jour de ma vie ” is one of those ready-made phrase-endings to which a Frenchman’s ear is accustomed. To make it comic, then, we need only clearly indi¬ cate the automatism of the person who utters it. This is what we get when we introduce an absurdity into the phrase. Here the absurdity is by no means the source of the comic, it is only a very simple and effective means of making it obvious.
We have quoted only one saying of M. Prudhomme, but the majority of those attri¬ buted to him belong to the same class. M. Prudhomme is a man of ready-made phrases. And as there are ready-made phrases in all languages, M. Prudhomme is always capable of being transposed, though seldom of being translated.
At times the commonplace phrase, under cover of which the absurdity slips in, is not so readily noticeable. “ I don’t like working between meals,” said a lazy lout There would be nothing amusing in the saying did there not exist that salutary precept in the realm 1 CHAP.
114 LAUGHTER of hygiene: “ One should not eat between meals.”
Sometimes, too, the effect is a complicated one. Instead of one commonplace phrase-form, there are two or three which are dovetailed into each other. Take, for instance, the remark of one of the characters in a play by Labiche, “ Only God has the right to kill His fellow- creature.” It would seem that advantage is here taken of two separate familiar sayings: “ It is God who disposes of the lives of men,” and, “ It is criminal for a man to kill his fellow- creature.” But the two sayings are combined so as to deceive the ear and leave the impres¬ sion of being one of those hackneyed sentences that are accepted as a matter of course. Hence our attention nods, until we are suddenly aroused by the absurdity of the meaning.
These examples suffice to show how one of the most important types of the comic can be projected — in a simplified form — on the plane of speech. We will now proceed to a form which is not so general.
2. “We laugh if our attention is diverted to the physical in a person when it is the moral n THE COMIC IN WORDS 115