CHAPTER XII

THE COMIC IN LITERATURE

        Shakespeare in his comedies uses inferior, humiliating, clumsy, and awkward situations to throw ridicule on the characters which he wishes to make comic: Thus in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" Shakespeare makes Falstaff relate to Master Brook the adventures passed through with Mistress Ford.

        The ridiculous situation in which Falstaff is put by the humiliation and discomfiture of his adventure with Mistress Ford is all the more enhanced by his relating all that to Mr. Brook, who is no other than Mr. Ford, the lady's husband in disguise. Falstaff unconsciously tells of his humiliating and, hence, ridiculous situation to the very man whom he would least have cared to meet.

        Of his next adventure with Mrs. Ford, Falstaff tells Mr. Brook:

        Shakespeare tells us here why to dress like a woman is comic, because it is inferior, it means to be unmanly, cowardly, to be inferior to the high dignity of manhood. The beating of an old woman by a strong man appears to have been quite comical in the time of Shakespeare. It was the expression of the superior way of triumph over an old witch. The lack of sympathy, the brutality of that age may be illustrated by the following anecdote taken from a book on old English jokes:

         A witch being at the stake to be burnt, she saw her son there and, being very dry, desired him to give her drink. "No, Mother," says the son, "'twill do you wrong; far the dryer you be, you'll burn all the better."

        In the enchanting fairy-comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Shakespeare represents the elf king Oberon as putting Titania, the fairy queen, in an inferior and hence ludicrous condition by throwing a charm on her and having her fall in love with the vulgar clown-weaver, Bottom, on whom the merry Puck claps an ass's hoad. Bottom sings his asinine song:

        Tita. [Awaking] What Angel wakes me from my flowery, bed?

        Bot. [Sings]

for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry "cuckoo" never so ?

        Tita. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:

                    Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;

                    So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;

                    And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

        Crowned with a chaplet of flowers Bottom's asinine head reposes on the graceful bosom of the fairy queen. Here Shakespeare avails himself of the still lower form of degradation by making the delicate and exquisite fairy queen fall in love with a hairy ass, a vulgar, low fellow and brute, thus depriving her of all appreciation of the good, true, and the beautiful. In fact, he makes her all the lower and all the more ridiculous by putting the little fairy queen in the position of taking the low, the inferior, the vulgar as the superior, excellent, and refined. Nothing can be more ridiculous than matching a fairy and an ass, nothing can be more ludicrous than vulgar taste in a fairy. As the Bible puts it: "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without taste and discretion." The contrast emphasizes difference of superior and inferior.

        When Homer in his masterly strokes of genius pictures the ludicrous, clumsy, awkward, and ungainly form of the cyclop, Polyphemus, he gives the outlines of the monster in a few humorous lines:

        Ulysses conceives the idea of making the cyclop drunk with wine:

        Such was the wine; to quench whose fervent stream
        Scarce twenty measures from the living stream To cool one cup sufficed.

        Ulysses then persuades the monster to taste of the wine:

        "Cyclop; since human flesh has been thy feast, Now drain this goblet, potent to digest!"
        He heard, he took, and pouring down his throat, Delighted, swill'd the large luxurious draught. "More! give me more!" (he cried); "the boon be thine,
        Whoe'er thou art that bear'st celestial wine! Declare thy name; not mortal is this juice,
        But this descended from the bless'd abodes,
       A rill of nectar, streaming from the gods"        He said, and greedy grasped the heady bowl, Thrice drained, and poured the deluge on his soul.
        His sense lay covered with the dozy fume;
        While thus my fraudful speech I reassume
        "Thy promised boon, O Cyclap ! now I claim
        And plead my title, Noman is my name."

        The generosity of the monster is then humorously set forth :

        The giant then: "Our promised grace receive,
        The hospitable boon we mean to give:
        When all thy wretched crew have felt my power, Noman shall be the last I will devour."
        When Ulysses with his companions deprive the monster of his eyesight; the cyclop,

        The cyclops come,
        Inquire the cause, and crowd the cavern door:
        "What hurts thee, Polyphemus? What strange affright
        Thus breaks our slumbers, and disturbs the night?
            Does any mortal, in the unguarded hour
            Of sleep oppress thee, or by fraud or power?
            Or thieves insidious thy fair flock surprise?" Thus they: the cyclop from his den replies: "Friends, Noman kills me; Noman, in the hour Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power."
            "If Noman hurt thee, but the hand divine
            Inflicts diseases, it fits to resign:
            To Jove or thy father Neptune pray,"
            The brethren cried, and instant strode away.

        Thus does Homer amuse his hearers with the clumsy, ungainly figure of the brutal, stupid monster by drawing a picture of the inferior, savage type of man-cyclop to the delight and ridicule of his Homeric audience.

        In "The Tempest" Shakespeare, under different circumstances, draws a similar scene of the drunken monster Caliban:

        The drunken sailor Stephano finds the cowering and trembling monster Caliban:

        Under the influence of drink Caliban gets a ludicrous fit of exaltation, displaying his low, mean type:

        We realize once more how Shakespeare, following Homer, has his sport of the ugly, ungainly monstrosity of a Caliban by making him resemble man, and then depriving him of all human qualities. The image of a degraded, low, mean, and drunken man-Caliban is pictured before the eyes of the spectators and stirs up derision and ridicule.

        In a similar ludicrous way Swift treats the classic story of Baucis and Philemon, who, for their goodness and piety, have been changed by Jupiter into a linden tree and an oak. The miracle occurs to two wandering saints, the house being changed into a church, of which Philemon is made the parson:

        Thus in his humorous way does Swift ridicule the classic story and the church miracles by interweaving a Miraculous story of saints and holy church with the pagan myth, interrelating the chimney with the church steeple and lofty spire, converting the profane inverted kitchen kettle into the consecrated bell. The saint, the heavy climbing of the wall after the beam and rafter, the church, the bell, and the kettle with its "inclination for below" all become intertwined in the miraculous myth. The whole forms an excellent parody in which the solemn, the majestic, and the sacred are reduced to the low, mean state of the vulgar pot and kettle.

        Similarly Heine, in his "Ideas," writes:

        I was once asked six times in succession, "Henri, what ' is the French for the faith?" And six times, ever more weepingly, I replied, "It is called, le credit." And after the seventh question, with his cheeks of a red deep cherry rage color, my furious examiner cried, "It is la religion!" and there was a rain of blows and a thunder of laughter from all my schoolmates.

        In another place Heine writes:

       The Berliner appeared to listen to me somewhat distractedly―more attractive objects had drawn his attention―and he finally interrupted me with the words, "Excuse me, if you please, if I interrupt you, but will you be so kind as to tell me what sort of a dog that is which runs there?" "That is another puppy."
        "Ah, you don't understand me. I refer to the great white shaggy dog without a tail."
        "My dear sir, that is the dog of the modern Alcibiades."
        "But," exclaimed the Berliner, "where is then the modern Alcibiades himself ?"
        "To tell the plain truth," I replied, "the office is not as yet occupied and we have so far only his dog."

        In the first sally Heine ridicules religion by associating it with the lower form of business credit. Religion with its high claims, unworldly views, ideals, and beliefs is reduced to sordid credit, business, and cash in the second sally Heine ridicules the politics and statesmen of his day by having them go to the dogs. The ridicule is all the stronger by bringing in the illustrious classical name of Alcibiades and then leaving in his place his proverbial tailless dog. Where there should have been a superior statesman, like Alcibiades, there we only find a puppy without a tail. In both cases the ridicule consists in showing a low, mean vulgarity where there should have been superiority and excellence. We laugh because we find the shadow instead of the substance, the vulgar instead of the sacred, the tail instead of the body, and where there should have been the man we only find a cur. The grand ideals of faith are based on commercial credit and the statesman is represented by a dog.

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