But a strange dress and other means of disguise are by no means always necessary for the befooling. When the credulous mood is on, the victim, whether fish or man, will rise to the crudest of artificial imitations, and comedy fastens on its victims when they are in this mood, as in the case of Malvolio, M. Jourdain and the rest.
Sometimes the comedian prepares for the needed deception by throwing its victim into a fit of absent-mindedness. A good example may be found in the scene between Arnolphe and the notary in Molière’s L’École des Femmes, where the tongues of the two make a pretence of running on together, while the two brains that move them remain in a state of perfect mutual misunderstanding. It is another kind of amusing self-deception when the comic figure, again showing his descent from the clown, undertakes to do something, and instantly displays a complete inability to carry out his undertaking. This is illustrated in a less obvious manner in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by the behaviour of Cléonte, who, after quarrelling with his mistress, and begging his valet to “lend a hand” to his spite and to sustain his resolve to bear down any remains of his foolish love, instantly afterwards protests against the obedient servant’s depreciations of the lady.
The comic person must be mercilessly attacked now and again, if the spectator is to get his fill of merriment. Molière again gives us the illustration. The scene in which the miser’s son, Cléante, playfully holds the father as in a vice, as he takes off the ring from the old gentleman’s finger and offers it as if in his behalf to the lady they both desire to wed, has the full flavour of the retaliative joke.
The laugh which is “malicieux” though not “amer” comes in a large wave when the deception is a kicking over of traces which have become galling. The tricking of the {351} severe guardian, parental or other, illustrated by Terence in the Adelphi, and by Molière in L’École des Femmes, L’École des Maris and other works, yields a lusty gratification as a practical joke directed against an oppressor.
A good deal of the fun of comedy may easily be seen to flow from a bizarre placing of a person, especially the setting of him in a situation where he has to do what he is not accustomed to do. If false appearances have to be kept up, so much the better. The tricks by which the sham doctor Sganarelle tries to play up to his part in Le Médecin malgré lui are of the broadly comic. A diverting situation may be obtained in other ways, as when lovers who have fallen out and are in the most doleful of moods have to meet. The subjection of the arch-hypocrite Tartuffe to the watchful eye of Orgon’s son is pregnant of comic effect.
As already hinted, comedy reflects those movements of social laughter which have been dealt with in a previous chapter. The works of Aristophanes are a storehouse for one who seeks illustrations of the popular attitude towards the new, when this lends itself to a buffoonish inflation. The comic stage is conservative in the sense that it is ready to ridicule whatever wears the look of a bizarre novelty. The importation of foreign dress and manners has been a well-recognised source of merriment in modern plays.
With grotesque innovations may be set the affectations of superior manners, fashions of speech and the rest, for which the laughter-loving public has had a quick eye. The exposure of an excessive fondness for using fine expressions, especially foreign ones, has always, one suspects, had an exhilarating effect on an educated audience. The preciosity of Molière’s dames lives as the great example of a culte of “the fine shades,” carried to the point of the irresistibly droll. {352}
The well-recognised social antagonisms, again, lend to comedy all their store of the amusing. The droll side of the bloodless feud between man and woman comes into view in all stages of the development of the art. It will, of course, vary in its mode of presentment with the social conditions of the time it represents, and more especially with the status of woman. In the comedy of Aristophanes, the mutual chaff of the sexes is a constant source of incidental effect and a main motive of two plays.[289] Yet the part taken by woman in the dialogue is exceedingly small.[290] The Greek assumption of her inferiority meets us with a charming frankness. The notion of her rising to a higher place in civic life is handled with a buffoonish extravagance which must have delighted conservative husbands. When the poet wishes to show up the folly of the Athenian war-party he invents a revolt of the dames, who by certain effective measures, connubial and other, manage to the lasting shame of their betters to bring about peace. The triumph of the inferior here reminds one of the hilarious victory won by the savage women in the art of rowing. The Greek comedy as a whole treated women, including hetaerae, with copious abuse;[291] yet in Latin comedy, at any rate, the woman now and again gets the better of the man. In the Asinaria of Plautus, an amorous old man, one of the favourite figures of comedy, is finely chastised by the wife who surprises his secret.
The interminable contest of man and woman carries with it the rivalry of the home and the tavern—or, as we should say to-day, the Club. In Plautus, who goes for a large {353} licence in pleasure, the opposition is emphasised. Terence, by introducing a more becoming conception of feminine nature and married life, prepared the way for a more equal intercourse between man and woman. It is, however, only under the improved conditions of modern family and social life that the verbal duel of the sexes in comedy has grown keen and brilliant.
Another and primitive relation, that of old and young, or, in its special form, of father and child, amply displays its possibilities of fun on the comic stage. In the newer Attic comedy, we are told, representations of the old became frequent, now as austere and avaricious, now as fond and tender-hearted.[292] The contrast of the severe “Governor” and the fond “Papa,” which we have seen illustrated in Terence and Molière, clearly points to the fact that comedy, as play designed expressly for merry youth, favours the son’s case, and seeks to relax the paternal leading strings.