Into what depth of independent thought did the man dream himself, that such fancies could take hold of him? When Aristophanes has had his say, there is nothing left over: there is no frame nor shell: there is no theatre nor world. Everything is exploded and scattered into sifting, oscillating, shimmering, slowly-sinking fragments of meaning and allusion. If anyone should think that I am going to analyze the intellect of Aristophanes, he is in error. I wish only to make a remark about it; namely, that his power is somehow rooted in personal detachment, in philosophical independence.
It was the genius of Aristophanes which must have suggested to Plato the idea which he throws out in the last paragraph of the Symposium. That great artist, Plato, has left many luminous half-thoughts behind him. He sets each one in a limbo—in a cocoon of its own light—and leaves it in careless-careful fashion, as if it were hardly worth investigation. The rascal! The setting has cost him sleepless nights and much parchment. He has redrawn and arranged it a hundred times. He is unable to fathom the idea, and yet it fascinates him. The setting in which Plato has placed his suggestion about the genius of tragedy and comedy is so very wonderful—both as a picture and as his apology for not carrying the idea further—that I must quote it, if only as an act of piety, and for my own pleasure.
[B]“Agathon arose in order that he might take his place on the couch by Socrates, when suddenly a band of revellers entered, and spoiled the order of the banquet. Someone who was going out having left the door open, they had found their way in, and made themselves at home; great confusion ensued, and everyone was compelled to drink large quantities of wine. Aristodemus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus and others went away—he himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long, took a good rest: he was awakened toward daybreak by a crowing of cocks, and when he awoke, the others were either asleep or had gone away; there remained only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus was only half awake, and he did not hear the beginning of the discourse; the chief thing which he remembered was Socrates compelling the other two to acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy, and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this they were constrained to assent, being drowsy and not quite following the argument. And first of all Aristophanes dropped off; then, when the day was already dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to depart, Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum he took a bath, and passed the day as usual. In the evening he retired to rest at his own home.”
[B] Jowett’s translation.
What can Plato have had in mind, that glimmers to us in the dawn as a sort of dim, divine intimation, and is almost immediately drowned by daylight and the market place? I suppose that Plato may have had in mind certain moments in comedy where the self-deluded isolation of some character is so perfectly given as to be almost sublime, and thus to suggest tragedy; or Plato may have had the opposite experience, and may have found himself almost ready to laugh at the fate of Ajax, whose weaknesses of character work out so inevitably, so logically, so beautifully in the tragedy of Sophocles. Perhaps the thought passed through Plato’s mind: “If this were not tragedy, what wonderful comedy it would be! If only the climax were less painful, if the mad Ajax, instead of killing himself should merely be driven to eat grass like an ox for a season, or put on his clothes hind-side-before—in fact, if Ajax’s faults could only be punished quite mildly in the outcome, here would be a comedy indeed!”
The stuff of which tragedy and comedy are made is the same stuff. The foibles of mankind work up more easily into comedy than into tragedy; and this is the chief difference between the two. We readily understand the Nemesis of temperament, the fatality of character, when it is exposed upon a small scale. This is the business of comedy; and we do not here require the labored artifice of gods, mechanical plot, and pointed allegory to make us realize the moral.
But in tragedy we have the large scale to deal with. A tragedy is always the same thing. It is a world of complicated and traditional stage devices for making us realize the helplessness of mankind before destiny. We are told from the start to expect the worst: there is going to be suffering, and the suffering is going to be logical, inevitable, necessary. There is also an implication to be conveyed that this suffering is somehow in accord with the moral constitution of the universe. The aim of the whole thing is to teach us to submit—to fit us for life.
There is profound truth at the bottom of these ideas; for whether you accept this truth in the form of the Christian doctrine of humility, or in the form of the Pagan doctrine of reverence for the gods, there is no question that a human being who is in the state of mind of Lear or of Ajax is in a dangerous state. He is going to be punished: he is going to punish himself. The complexities of human life, however, make this truth very difficult to convey upon the grand scale. It is, in daily existence, obscured by other and more obvious truths. In order to dig it out and present it and make it seem at all probable, every historical device and trapping and sign-post of suggestion—every stage tradition must be used. The aim is so exalted and sombre, and the machinery is so ponderous that laughter is out of the question: it is forbidden. The magnitude of the issues oppress us; and we are told that it would be cruel to the hero and to the actor and to the author for us to laugh. And yet we are always on the verge of laughter, and any inattention to the rubric may bring on a fit of it. If a windlass breaks we really laugh harder than the occasion warrants.
In reading the Book of Job, where the remoteness of the scene and certain absurdities in the plot relieve the strain of tragedy, we laugh inevitably; and the thing that makes us laugh is the very thing that ought to fill us with awe—the rigor of the logic.
Thus much for the sunny side of tragedy. But let us recur to the night side of comedy. Falstaff is a comic figure, is he not? And yet what thoughtful man is there who has not enough of the Puritan in him to see the tragedy of such a character as Falstaff? How must Falstaff have appeared to Bunyan!—every stroke of genius which to us makes for the comic, adding a phosphor-gleam of hell-fire. And Bunyan is right: Falstaff is an awful picture; and had Shakespeare punished him adequately he would appear awful. Let us imagine that Shakespeare had written a play about the old age of Falstaff, picturing his decay of intellect, his destitution, his flickering return to humor which is no longer funny—what could have been more tragic?