Human nature—as we have analyzed it, with results that will be told you by the cashier at our bank—will laugh louder and oftener at these spectacles, in the respective order we have chronicled them, than at anything else one might name. Human nature here, as before, insists that the object of the attacks—the other man—be not really hurt.
Now, let us tell you how we arrived at our conclusions. The eye is the most delicate part of the body. If a man, therefore, pokes his two forefingers into the eyes of another man without hurting them, then human nature will make you scream with mirth; not at the sight of the poking of the fingers into the other man's eyes (as you who have seen us do this trick night in and night out have imagined), but because you get all the sensations of such a dangerous act without there being any actual pain involved in the case of the man you were watching. You laugh because human nature tells you to. You laugh because the man who had the fingers stuck into his eyes might have been hurt badly, but wasn't.
The greatest laughter, the greatest comedy, is divided by a hair from the greatest tragedy. Always remember that! As the chance of pain, the proportion of physical misery, the proportion of tragedy, becomes diminished (see the other items in the table), so does the proportion of laughter become less and less. We have often tried to figure out a way to do something to the other's kneecap—second in delicacy only to the eye—but the danger involved is too great. Once let us figure out the trick, however, and we shall have capitalized another item that may be listed high in our table. Here is how you can verify the truth of our observations yourself:
You have seen those small imitation tacks made of rubber. Exhibit one, put it on a chair, ask a stranger to sit down—and everybody who is in on the joke will scream with mirth. Try it with a real tack, and everybody will take on a serious face and will want to keep the man from sitting down.
6. What George M. Cohan Has to Say
George M. Cohan spent his boyhood on the vaudeville stage as one of "The Four Cohans." In collaboration with George J. Nathan, Mr. Cohan published in McClure's Magazine for November, 1913, an article entitled "The Mechanics of Emotion." Here is what he has to say about some bits of business that are sure-fire laughs: [1]
[1] These sure-fire bits of business should be considered as being equally effective when used in any form of stage work. Some of them, however, lend themselves most readily to the vaudeville two-act.
Here, then, are a few of the hundred-odd things that you constantly laugh at on the stage, though, when you see them in cold type, you will probably be ashamed of doing so.
(1) Giving a man a resounding whack on the back under the guise of friendship. The laugh in this instance may be "built up" steadily in a climacteric way by repeating the blow three times at intervals of several minutes.
(2) A man gives a woman a whack on the back, believing in an absent-minded moment that the woman (to whom he is talking) is a man.