CHAPTER XI. THE LAUGHABLE IN ART: COMEDY.
We have traced the development of laughter in the individual and in the community with as little reference as possible to the influence of Art. It has been assumed that the feelings which move us to laughter are primal, and capable of expanding and deepening independently of this influence. At the same time, it is certain that the educative lead of the artist has been at work from a very early stage of human development. We have found even in savage life the figure of the “funny man,” the expert in lifting the sluice gates of social laughter by means of jest and pantomime. Within the historical period, the practice of engaging jesters for banquets, and social entertainments generally, appears to go back to remote times and very simple social conditions.[281] The finer and more methodical exercise of men’s gift of laughter by these skilled choragi must have been a potent factor in its development. We may now glance at the evolution of art on its amusing and comic side.
This is no occasion for probing to its dark bottom the {344} problem of the function of art. If we keep to the beginnings of the art of ministering to men’s laughter, as we may study them among savages and our own children, the theories which look to art for the expression of an idea, or even of an emotion seeking for resonance, seem to have but little relevance. It looks as if the amusing art grew out of that simple social act which I have called a play-challenge, as illustrated in the game of reciprocal tickling. Hence, the play-theory of art serves particularly well for our present purpose. The quality of beneficent productivity which is an essential of art may be supposed to have grown distinct, as soon as an individual of superior cunning in playing on the mirthful organ found himself vis-à-vis with an audience. No social impulse of an art-like character strikes out its visible and audible effect more directly and more impressively than the desire to raise a laugh.
Taking this view, we see that the art which moves us to mirth illustrates the conative process in art-production. To amuse men, to raise their spirits to the treble pitch of gaiety, pre-supposes the desire to please. In all simple art-performance, this essentially social motive works consciously and directly: the partly unconscious art of the “fool” being here, of course, overlooked. In higher forms, the will to move men merrily is, I believe, always present in normal cases, and controls the whole art-process, though it may not be consciously realised at every moment. In the case of the comic actor, at any rate, a volitional control of his own feeling and its expression seems to be a prime necessity. This is sufficiently illustrated in the solemn aspect commonly assumed by the popular jester, in order to add to the mirthful effect of his utterance.
It would be an interesting inquiry, if our limits allowed {345} of it, to examine the means which art, as a whole, possesses for moving us to laughter. This would open up the curious question of the symbolism of colours and tones, and of their combinations, as expressive of mirthful feeling and of jocose intention.
That laughter has for its proper excitant men and their doings, at once suggests that only those arts which represent human ideas and actions on a large scale have a considerable field for the exhibition of the ludicrous. Architecture, apart from sculpture, is heavily handicapped here. Music, as the expressive art par excellence, has a certain though narrowly limited range of effect, as may be seen in the characteristic rhythms, such as combinations of light staccato with deep-pitched notes, incompleted phrases and so forth, which do duty in comic opera. Some of this tickling effect is certainly due, not to an expression of jocose feeling, but to the bizarre aspect of the combination of sounds. And the same is probably true of the slightly amusing effects of such grotesque combinations of colour as are common in the costume of the harlequin, of the prince of mockers, and of other more or less comic figures. The grotesque and amusing in dress, that of the clown for example, is manifestly based on its suggestions, especially those of wrong sex, wrong age and the like.
Passing by the comic directions of pictorial art, including the highly developed process of modern political and other caricature, the great rôle in stimulating men’s laughing susceptibilities falls to literature, and pre-eminently to dramatic literature and its interpreter, the stage. Here, only, can the procession of human follies display something of its variegated amplitude. Hither must we come, if we would fain laugh our fill and know what resources art possesses for playing on the whole gamut of our “risibility”. {346}
It would be well if we knew the beginnings of jocose literature. It may be that the jest-books preserve for us forms resembling those which these beginnings have taken. A short descriptive story of some practical joke, or of some smart bit of repartee, may have grown naturally enough out of the evening fire-side talk and become fixed and handed down to new generations. The Mediæval Contes (fabliaux) may be viewed as a slight expansion of such stories and fragments of talk. This short anecdotal story would allow a certain scope for mimicry and a crude art of elocution. A rudimentary form of comic acting, with its mimic gestures and its facetious dialogue, would naturally take its rise in the rehearsal of such a story by an acknowledged expert. The bits of dialogue, at least, would enforce a certain amount of mimicry of tones and gestures.
The beginnings of comedy, so far as we can get back to them, bear out these conjectures. The humble birthplace of Greek comedy was the village revel—a sort of merry harvest home—of the vintagers. At first, we read, there was no actor, only a leader “who let off coarse and scurrilous impromptus”.[282] Or, as another writer has it, Greek farce began with mocking songs and ironical speeches during processions, the Greeks being quick to mimic and to improvise.[283]