The development of distinct groups within a community influences the behaviour of the laughing impulse, first of {260} all, by introducing diversity of occupations, abilities and intelligence. In this way it enlarges the field for those relative judgments about competence and fitness with which, as savage laughter illustrates, simple forms of mirth have so much to do. Thus, the establishment of distinctions of employment and mode of life between the sexes has contributed copiously to that mirthful quizzing of each by the other which seems to have been a prime ingredient in human jocosity from the lowest stages of culture. The slightly malicious laughter of the male at female incompetence, which is seen in the schoolboy’s treatment of his sister, is illustrated throughout the course of literature. And good examples are not wanting of a turning of the tables by the female on the male. The story of King Alfred’s misadventure with the cakes—of which we have found the counterpart in savage life—is an example of the more shrewish criticism of the male ignoramus by the female expert. When the sense of injury is less keen, and the impression of the folly of the performance fills the soul, the shrewish note is apt to fall to the genial pitch of laughter. The differentiation of industrial and other employments, such as those of countryman and townsman, of landsman and seaman, of soldier and civilian, serve to develop new centres of concerted laughter, and new points of attack.
The formation of social groups further enlarges the material and the opportunities for laughter by introducing noticeable and impressive differences of behaviour, dress and speech. In this way the field of the odd, the absurd, that which contradicts our own customs and standards, has been made wide and fertile. A mere difference of locality may suffice to generate such differences. Not so many years ago, one could hear in the West of England the {261} jibes which the people in one small town or district were wont to hurl at those in another. We read that in the Middle Ages, when local differences of dress and speech were so much more marked than now, satires on people of particular localities were not uncommon—though probably much more than a perception of the laughably odd was involved in these rather fierce derisions.[228]
The immediate utility of this mirthful quizzing of other sets would, like that carried out by one savage tribe on another, consist in the preservation of the characteristics of one’s own set. But the play of laughter about class-distinctions illustrates another of its benefits. When one set gets used to the distinctive ways of another, it tends to regard them as right and proper for the latter; and it may carry its regard for their propriety so far as to support the inner sentiment of the other group by deriding those members who do not conform to their group-customs. Distinctive customs have been conserved not only—to adopt ethical terms having a somewhat different meaning—by “internal sanctions” in the shape of serious penalties as well as ridicule administered by fellow-members of the set, but by “external sanctions” in the shape of outside mockery. The imposing soldierly attitude has perhaps been kept up quite as much by the merry quizzing of civilians as by any military discipline and esprit de corps. A poor tottering hero in uniform could, one opines, never have escaped the eye of citizens lying in wait for the laughable.
The finer opportunities for this mirthful screwing up of men of other groups to their proper moral height would occur when the peculiarities of the mode of life imposed a special rule of behaviour, and, particularly, when this rule was a severe one. The hollow hero, trying to hide the {262} poverty of his courage in braggadocio, has been a favourite figure in comic literature, classic and modern. A notable illustration of this situation is the laughter heaped on the clergy by the people during the Middle Ages. The caricatures of the monk—representing him, for instance, as a Reynard in the pulpit with a cock below for clerk, and the many Contes which exposed his cunningly contrived immoralities, and frequently visited them with well-merited chastisement, show pretty plainly that the popular laughter in this case had in it something of hate and contempt, and was directed in part to the exposure and punishment of the celibate class. This may be asserted, even though it must not be forgotten that in these Contes the holy man by no means infrequently emerges from his dangerous experiment unscathed: a fact which suggests that in the popular sentiment there lurked, not merely something of the child’s mirthful wonder at daring cunning, but a certain sympathetic tolerance for a caste, on the shoulders of which was laid a somewhat weighty yoke. The mental attitude of the narrator rather suggests here and there that of an easy-going Englishman when confronted with the spectacle, say of a drunken sailor or soldier.[229]
Another class having high pretensions, which has come in for much of the “screwing-up” kind of laughter, is the physician. Next to the healer of the soul, he undertakes the most for mortals. In Gil Blas, in the comedies of Molière, and in other works, we may see how his ancient methods and his pedantries were apt to affect the intelligent layman with mirthful ridicule. {263}
So far nothing has been said of the rank of the groups thus formed. The differentiating of a higher from a lower caste, with more or less of authority on one side and subserviance on the other, will turn out to be the most important feature in social grouping in its bearing on the calling forth of social laughter. As we have seen, our merriment has much to do with dignities, with the claims on our respect made by things above us; while, on the other hand, the contemptuous laugh which has had volume and duration implies a relation of superior and inferior—if only the fugitive one created by the situation of quizzer. All stages of group-formation seem to involve something of this distinction between an upper and a lower class. The simplest conceivable structure of society includes a head and ruler of family, clan or tribe, and subjects. Hence, the vast significance of social grouping as a condition of choral laughter.
How far persons in positions of authority have gratified their sense of superiority by derisive laughter at those below them, it would, of course, be hard to say. When power is real and absolute there are other ways of expressing contempt. Literature undoubtedly furnishes examples of the ridicule by the social superior of the ways of a lower class, as in the Provençal poem of Bertran de Born (c. 1180) in which the villains are treated contemptuously. Yet the larger part of literature, not being produced for a ruling caste, does not throw much light on this subject.[230] One can only infer with some probability, from the relations of parents and adults, generally, to children, and of white {264} masters to their coloured slaves, that power has always been tempered by some admixture of good-nature, which composition has produced a certain amount of playful jocosity, at once corrective and cementing.
The derisive laughter of the superior is particularly loud in certain cases where the authority is not so real as it might be. Man’s ridicule of his not too obedient spouse may be said almost to shriek adown the ages. We may read in papyri of Egypt of the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C. of the misfortunes of a husband, named Anoupou.[231] The Greek comedians thought no abuse of the sex too bitter or too coarse.[232] In Latin literature we have satirical portraits of different types of women, drawn under the figures of various brutes, a fox, a mare, etc.[233] In mediæval society, the low opinion of women entertained by their lords is illustrated in the firm persuasion that the only way to treat them was to beat them—watching them was quite vain—so that they might be occupied all the day with crying.[234] Sometimes, as in the Arabian Nights, this contempt takes the form of bitter denunciation; but, for the most part, it has laughed in the brighter key of comedy. Even the satire here is wont to lose all trace of savageness, and to assume the tone of a good-natured acceptance of the incurable.
While the formation of social ranks has thus secured a wide range for supercilious mocking of inferiors, it has guaranteed these ample opportunity of avenging themselves by laughter at the expense of the authorities.
How soon in man’s history any such laughter became {265} possible, it would be hard to say. In the simpler types of community, the severe restraints laid on youths by the men of the tribe must, one supposes, have been fatal to any indulgence by sons in laughter at the expense of fathers, such as is illustrated in comedy both ancient and modern. The penalties attached to breach of ceremonial rule must have stifled any impulse of laughter, if it happened to arise. It is said that when the chief of a certain tribe chanced to stumble, his subjects were bound to pretend to stumble in order to cover up his defect.[235] The utility of this quaint custom may have lain in its effectual suppression of the risible impulse. This theory, however, postulates a kind of courtier widely removed from the modern, of whom it seems safe to say that he might be trusted to see stumblings and worse without feeling an over-mastering temptation to laugh.