Catharsis

AARONISTOTLE'S POETICS: A SCHOLARSHIP-BASED THOUGHT EXPERIMENT CONSTRUCTING ARISTOTLE'S COMEDIC THEORY

by Aaron Nicholas Penn

A thesis presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Central Arkansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of

Master of Arts in English

Conway, Arkansas May, 2012

UMI Number: 1516458

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TO THE OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES: The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Aaron Nicholas Penn presented on April 17th, 2012. ___________________________________ Charles Bane, Committee Chairperson ___________________________________ Jay Ruud ___________________________________ Dwayne Coleman

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PERMISSION Title

Aaronistotle's Poetics: A Scholarship-Based Thought Experiment Constructing Aristotle's Comedic Theory

Department

English

Degree

Master of Arts

In presenting this thesis/dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduate degree from the University of Central Arkansas, I agree that the Library of this University shall make it freely available for inspections. I further agree that permission for extensive copying for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor who supervised my thesis/dissertation work, or, in the professor’s absence, by the Chair of the Department or the Dean of the Graduate School. It is understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Central Arkansas in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis/dissertation.

___________________________ Aaron Penn April 13th, 2012

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ABSTRACT

I like to describe this thesis as a scholarship-based thought experiment constructing Aristotle’s comedic theory using post-Aristotelian plays and quasiAristotelian theory. In other words, this is a theory to address the question that if Aristotle was alive today and looked at the history of comedy, what would his new Poetics II be? It also addresses some of the issues that Aristotle would have discussed in Poetics II, and how his comedic theory would affect that particular segment, particularly notable in my divergence from the most common catharsis interpretation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract......................................................................................................................iv Chapter 1: In Theory Introduction: Much Madness is Divinest Sense (To A Discerning Eye)........1 Problems: A Pre-emptive Confession.............................................................2 Aristotelian Dramatic Theory.........................................................................4 Defining Comedy..........................................................................................12 Tractacus Coislinianus Overview.................................................................22 A Modern Aristotle in a Nutshell.................................................................28 Chapter 2: In Practice Early English Comedy: The Second Shepherds Play....................................31 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama—Ben Jonson’s Volpone...........................37 Shakespeare’s Comedic Spectrum.................................................................49 Comedy of Wit: The Restoration and the 18th Century................................58 Arms and the Earnest: 19th Century Comedy................................................75 20th Century Comedy Renaissance................................................................77 Chapter 3: In Conclusion All’s Well That Ends Well.............................................................................96 Works Cited.................................................................................................100

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Chapter 1: In Theory Introduction: Much Madness is Divinest Sense (To A Discerning Eye) Since the creation of Western drama in Ancient Greece playwrights have studied the workings of drama, how to create specific effects within their audience, and which effects should be produced by particular types of drama. Most people have substituted movies for the stage, but unlike movies each stage performance is unique, created anew for each audience. If you come back performance after performance, become a student of this group and this play, you will see infinite new nuances to their speech, to the staging, and to the audience itself. You realize just how much a part of the performance you are, even sitting amongst the crowd. But the primary illusion must be created through art and not chance so that it can be repeated, though with subtle variations. Much of this art lies in the stagecraft, the performers’ ability to adapt to new situations and audience, to manipulate their speech and timing to best produce the desired effects. However, the primary effects lie within the script itself. The most notable example of this study is the surviving section of Aristotle’s Poetics, which primarily discusses tragedy, though there are many passing comments on comedy and epics. Before looking at the Poetics, let me first explain the method to my madness. First, I am no Greek scholar, nor will I attempt to become one. I am not going to argue about the “true” meaning of the Poetics or theorize what exactly Aristotle wrote in the Poetics II. Others have tried, most notably (and notoriously) Richard Janko. I will use an English translation of the surviving section of the Poetics as well as Janko’s translation of the Tractacus Coislinianus, an interesting document that may be (but is probably not) an outline for the Poetics II. I like to describe this thesis as a scholarship-based thought

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experiment constructing Aristotle’s comedic theory using post-Aristotelian plays and quasi-Aristotelian theory. In other words, I am formulating a theory to address the question that if Aristotle was alive today and looked at the history of comedy, what would his new Poetics II be? I will also address some of the issues that Aristotle would have discussed in Poetics II, and how his comedic theory would affect that particular segment, particularly notable in my divergence from the most common catharsis interpretation.

Problems: A Pre-emptive Confession There is no shortage of problems with the fundamental assumptions used in creating this thesis, so let me address a few before we get too involved. First, there are many problems with the texts themselves. Scholars are often divided on the very nature of the Poetics—whether it is a student’s notes from Aristotle’s lectures, Aristotle’s speaking notes, something Aristotle wrote for his students to study, or something else entirely. Reading the Poetics is certainly an odd experience—some sections are incredibly detailed and insightful, whereas others barely allude to major topics of discussion, or fail to clear up confusion about an ambiguous crucial term. Also, my translation of the Poetics was published originally in 1967, but it is the most commonly republished version ever since. As O.B. Hardison, the editor of this edition, describes: Readers who do not know Greek must depend on translations, but a translation is always a disguised commentary. Even the most conscientious and well-trained translator makes innumerable choices when rendering a passage of the Greek into English, and his choices depend heavily on

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assumptions he makes about the larger meaning of Aristotle's argument. (55) These choices are most apparent in the ambiguous key terms, which I will discuss shortly. As for the Tractacus Coislinianus, Malcomn Heath’s hilarious comment should suffice to describe the difficulties in using it as a base text, “ I shall have nothing to say about the Tractatus Coislinianus, an obscure and contentious little document which must (despite Janko's energetic attempt to restore its credit) remain an inappropriate starting-point for discussion” (344). As I alluded in the previous paragraph, several of Aristotle’s major terms are highly ambiguous, particularly mimesis, hamartia, and catharsis.1 Of these three, only catharsis is not discussed to some extent in the extant portion of the Poetics. It is worth noting that even with the lengthy discussion of mimesis in the Poetics I scholars are still fundamentally divided in interpreting its meaning(s). My particular interpretation of this term is not radically different than most scholars’, so I will save that for later discussion. As for hamartia, the divide is over whether it should be interpreted as “tragic flaw” or “tragic mistake.” This is a pretty significant difference, since one implies a fundamental aspect of the character, whereas the other is a “simple” mistake that anyone could make given the right circumstances. There are excellent arguments on both sides, but seem mostly irrelevant to a discussion on comedy—unless there is a corresponding version of hamartia in comedy. Indeed I will argue that there is, but I also argue that this comic hamartia could be a mistake or a flaw depending on the playwright’s purpose. As for catharsis, it is generally interpreted as a purging of pity and fear from the audience,

1 There are variant transliterated spellings for each of these words, but these are the spellings I have come across most often.

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which are the emotions aroused by an ideal tragedy. A second somewhat common interpretation for catharsis is sublimation, bringing the riotous emotions of pity and fear into a harmonious balance, ideally with all other emotions as well, leaving the audience in something akin to a Zen meditation state. I will argue that this is closer to the true meaning, but that the meaning of catharsis must be inextricably tied to comedy as well as tragedy, and that neither of these definitions completely addresses catharsis’ meaning, though sublimation is closer. The next major problem is the Tractacus Coislinianus2 itself, as Malcomn Heath has described. The history of the TC is obscure and bizarre. Its relation to the Poetics I is unknown, but several theories exist—that it is a basic outline of Poetics II (Janko’s theory), that it is a student’s notes (possibly heavily corrupted), or that it is a student or scholar’s attempt to reconstruct Poetics II (this thesis’ disreputable grandfather, if you will3). Since the TC is not reliable solely as an academic source I will be cherry-picking pieces of it I find useful in formulating a working comic theory.

Aristotelian Dramatic Theory Aristotle’s dramatic theory is fundamentally descriptive, which is why an Aristotelian-esque theory can be created using any significant body of plays and Aristotle’s surviving works as a guideline—both in using the Poetics I’s comments on comedy and contrasting it to Aristotle’s tragic theory. It is worth noting (again) that this thesis is not an attempt to remake Janko’s reconstruction of Poetics II, since it is based on 2 Which will hereafter be abbreviated TC. 3 OK, I’ll admit I added the “disreputable” part just because I thought it was a funny description, although Malcomn Heath would probably agree with it—though he’d probably consider the grandson disreputable as well.

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the TC, but rather to write a new Poetics II not based primarily on either Poetics I or the TC, but first based on a large body of English-language comedies and then attempting to use Aristotle’s method and surviving work to describe how comedic theory has worked and works best. My philosophy on comedy (and all theater, for that matter) is fairly utilitarian—any technique that accomplishes its end is self-justified, since it has succeeded. The only thing that must be established is that the technique does consistently work. This is true for each individual comic technique as well as for the comedy itself. That being said, some techniques work better than others, but can only be called “better” or “worse” if the criterion for comparison is clearly qualified—for example, I would argue that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is better than Hamlet…as a comedy. As for artistic merit? That is more difficult, since it is not easy to find a criterion to fairly compare them (“artistic merit” itself must be subdivided before a comparison could possibly be made). Since Aristotle’s theory is primarily descriptive, his philosophy is similar—he describes what worked for Ancient Greece’s greatest playwrights, and ranked the relative excellence of various techniques based on clearly established criteria. The most fundamental of these criteria in the Poetics I addresses the central question, “What is the purpose of tragedy?” After delving through the Poetics a reader will eventually come across Aristotle’s relatively succinct definition of tragedy: Tragedy, then, is a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; 4 by means of 4 Leon Golden uses a significantly different translation here, “Tragedy is, then, an imitation of a noble and complete action, having the proper magnitude” (285). The most important part being the “imitation of a noble” action as opposed to serious implications. I cannot judge the translation itself, but a “noble action” doesn’t make sense and seems to be a reference to the main character’s “nobility,” which is not his action but an inherent trait. However, the difference within a tragic play is negligible, since it would amount to the same effect I describe as “serious implications.”

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language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification of tragic acts which have those emotional characteristics. (Aristotle 25) This is an extremely dense definition, and since the definition of comedy is both paralleled and contrasted to this primary definition, it must be first unpacked. First, tragedy has actors who take on the role (imitation/mimesis) of a tragical figure, generally someone from history.5 The serious implications are a life-and-death conflict that escalates until a crisis is fully realized, usually with the protagonist dying, literally or symbolically.6 As for complete, it means that the action is fully enclosed within the play—a clear plot structure fully developed and executed. Magnitude is a reinforcement of “serious implications,” but on the societal scale. Oedipus’ fall affects not only him and his family, but the entire city he rules. This is shown by the famine his unnatural relationship has caused in Thebes and the strife that follows in the next generations, depicted (in part) and alluded to in Antigone. As for the sensuously attractive language, Aristotle essentially means written in some form of verse. Varieties separated into parts refers to the traditional Greek divisions of a play, which are referred to by strophe, antistrophe, etc. (and also describe the chorus’ semi-dancing movements). Each section has a particular style associated with it and the style of writing should reflect both the

5 This has not remained quite the same, but it was part of Aristotle’s theory, which I’ll discuss once we get to theatrical probabilities. 6 For example, we could argue that Oedipus’ fate in Oedipus Rex is a symbolic death, since his entire life as he knew it ceases to exist, reinforced by gouging his own eyes out and spending the rest of his life as a blind wanderer.

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speaker and his purpose within that section. A member of the chorus trying to dissuade Oedipus from investigating his past should speak in a particular form and sound like a regular person of a particular class, but should also sound like a rhetorician, meaning that two styles of speech are molded together so that each is recognizable but makes a pleasing combination. Aristotle’s next comment on actors portraying the action instead of narration is pretty straightforward—instead of a person reading/narrating a story, a group of people portray the tale. The final line implies the act of catharsis as most scholars describe it: the action of the play arouses pity and fear within the audience, and through the completion of the tragedy these emotions undergo a “purification.” This is a useful translation in that it does not make it any easier to figure out what catharsis means in terms of expurgation or sublimation, but gives a general idea of the purpose. Now that we have a general idea of Aristotle’s tragic theory, it is worth looking at the various comments he makes upon comedic theory in the extant section of Poetics. These comments are generally far less detailed than his analysis of tragedy, but they can help create an idea of where Aristotle started while working on the second section of the Poetics. First, in what we would call his introduction, Aristotle states that comedy, tragedy, and epics differ from each other in three ways: namely, their means, their objects, and their methods (15). The translation then changes “means” to “medium” when describing the first of these three and proceeds to confuse the hell out of me, no matter how many times I read it. After reading this section two dozen times7 the best way I can describe it is as the metaphorical grammar and syntax of drama. Means/medium is the mechanistic aspect of any artwork, the foundation of the way it is constructed. He

7 For once I’m not exaggerating. It’s a three paragraph section that I can almost quote verbatim.

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describes tragedy’s and comedy’s means/medium as “rhythm, song, and verse” (17). In a later section he tries to elaborate on this slightly and only makes the problem worse, so I will just leave means/medium with that description. Aristotle’s description of tragedy's and comedy’s objects is much more useful, since he uses a polar contrast of comedy and tragedy to describe both, but his description is enigmatic. He argues that in tragedy, people better than the “average” are portrayed, whereas comedy portrays people that are worse than this average (17-18). He does not provide any evidence or examples in this first section, but later goes on to describe each in more detail, so I will return to it shortly. The third characteristic, methods, is overwhelmingly obvious. Aristotle describes three different ways that a story can be told: straight narration, straight dramatization, or “mixed mode,” which is a bit of both. Naturally, comedy and tragedy both are usually straight dramatization, but can sometimes be mixed mode. Skipping ahead a few sections, Aristotle gives a brief, partial definition of comedy: Comedy is as we said it was, an imitation of persons who are inferior; not, however, going all the way to full villainy, but imitating the ugly, of which the ludicrous is one part. The ludicrous, that is, is a failing or a piece of ugliness which causes no pain or destruction; thus, to go no farther, the comic mask is something ugly and distorted but painless” (23-4, emphasis mine). This is difficult to fully contrast with tragedy, since a tragic hero must have a hamartia, the fatal mistake or flaw. If hamartia is interpreted as a fatal mistake, then the contrast is less difficult—the ugliness in tragedy is not a part of the character’s character, but a

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momentary lapse of judgment. In the case of comedy, Aristotle seems to say here that there is an actual problem within the person’s character. Thus the corresponding comic characteristic to hamartia I will call the comic flaw. This flaw is what makes the characters “inferior,” but Aristotle is quick to point out that neither are they villains. Instead they “imitat[e] the ugly, of which the ludicrous is one part.” Since he does not mention the other parts, Aristotle is either implying that it is the most important or the section is incomplete. He describes this ludicrousness by comparing it to the comic mask, “ugly and distorted but painless.” To simplify that a bit, it means the playwright has license to create any type of character with any variety of flaws so long as they avoid outright villainy and invoking tragic emotions, which would be either of opposite extremes: if the character’s flaws are too egregious the character becomes a villain. If they have no major flaws they become noble, which makes them more akin to a tragic hero. This comic hero’s “inferiority” is a range of points between the two extremes. Shortly after this section is Aristotle’s brief definition of tragedy that I previously quoted, but we will skip that for the moment and move on to his comments on characters and plots. As in the previous sections he only makes brief references (at most) to comedy, but we can use these to create a contrasting comic theory. First, Aristotle makes an extremely bold claim: “a tragedy cannot exist without a plot, but it can without characters” (27). It is worth looking at a significant portion of this section: The greatest of [the dramatic] elements is the structuring of the incidents. For tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action, and they have moral quality in accordance with their characters but are happy or unhappy in accordance with their actions; hence they are not active in

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order to imitate their characters, but they include the characters along with the actions for the sake of the latter. Thus the structure of events, the plot, is the goal of tragedy, and the goal is the greatest thing of all. Again: a tragedy cannot exist without a plot, but it can without characters . . . It is much the same case as with painting: the most beautiful pigments smeared on at random will not give as much pleasure as a blackand-white outline picture. Besides, the most powerful means tragedy has for swaying our feelings, namely the peripeties and recognitions, are elements of plot. So plot is the basic principle, the heart and soul, as it were, of tragedy, and the characters come second: (. . .) it is the imitation of an action and imitates the persons primarily for the sake of their action. (278)

What he means by this is that the characters are interchangeable the play will still work as long as the plot remains intact. However, if you manipulate the plot but keep the characters the same, you fundamentally change the play. This is true in a variety of genres that share basic plots, such as the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes IV-VI) and Harry Potter: Orphaned boy is watched over from afar by wizened elderly gentleman with mystical powers who greets the boy after he has come of age, trains him to battle the force of evil and sets him on a journey of discovery about himself. He has two main companions, one male and one female, and it looks like the female is falling in love with our hero, but actually falls in love with his best friend. We could go on with the

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similarities all day, but it just proves Aristotle’s point—there is great power in the fundamental plots and we continually reinvent the stories with new characters. In theory, comedy is somewhat an inversion of this trait, at least insofar as plot is secondary to character, which is why modern comedy movies can be absolutely awful, but if you have Will Ferrell playing Will Ferrell it will still be profitable. What demonstrates this quality more fully is the variety of comedies. Comedy can be extremely lighthearted and whimsical, such as George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You, or it can be horrifying and hilarious at the same time, as in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Comedies can be fantasies like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or strange tales of menace like Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party or even Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (often performed as if the title was The Tragedy of Shylock). Comedies lend themselves to meta-theater, such as the playwithin-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Noises Off. What Aristotle does say about comedic characters is that they are “arbitrary,” and that plots are constructed on “general probabilities” (33). This means the comedic playwright constructs the plot and then a character to fill each role, as opposed to tragedy, which was generally a reconstruction of historical and/or mythological stories. Interestingly, Aristotle argues against this practice in tragedy, since only a few in the audience knew the historical references but everyone enjoyed the tragedies (34), therefore the historical basis was unnecessary (and why tragedies since the Ancient Greeks have generally departed from historical reenactments). Comedies in Aristotle’s time were usually original and the comedic playwright was only limited by his audience’s suspension of disbelief.

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Defining Comedy As quoted earlier, Aristotle defines tragedy as: . . . a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification of tragic acts which have those emotional characteristics. (25) Compare this to Richard Janko’s expansion of the TC’s comedy definition: Comedy is a representation of an action that is laughable and lacking in magnitude, complete, [in embellished speech,] with each of its parts [used] separately in the [various] elements [of the play; represented] by people acting and [not] by narration; accomplishing by means of pleasure and laughter the catharsis of such emotions. It has laughter as its mother. (Janko 43-44)8 Two things become immediately apparent: First, the TC is largely based on Poetics I, written to imitate the style of Aristotle’s tragic definition; second, Janko has used the surviving section of the Poetics I to make the two even more similar.9 JTC’s definition of comedy begins by setting the fundamental element of comedy as laughter, which we see at both the beginning and end of the definition. As opposed to tragedy, it lacks magnitude, 8 All bracketed sections are Janko's additions. 9 I’d suggest reading Janko’s translation twice—first without Janko’s additions, and then with the additions. Particularly note where Janko changes the meaning of the original text to match the Poetics I in wording and punctuation. I will only discuss Janko’s full version, since a comparison of the original and new versions would be particularly lengthy and not useful in creating my own definition. I will, however, try to refer to this as Janko’s TC (abbreviated JTC) as opposed to just the TC, since they are not the same.

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meaning that ramifications beyond the play’s characters should not exist (i.e. the hero falls and an entire city falls with him). As for “complete,” he means the play completes a full plot arc without loose ends. The play’s action should be sufficient unto itself without a sequel, a prequel, or a long narrated explanation of what happened to each minor character from that point onward.10 Janko does add the “embellished speech” segment to match the Poetics I, with good reason. In tragedy a character should sound elevated above the average person, but in comedy that type of embellished speech would be inappropriate. Instead a comic actor should sound like the ultimate version of the average person (which is a bit of an oxymoron)—they elevate the everyday language and represent the exceptional common person. I will discuss this more later. The next phrase, “with each of its parts [used] separately in the [various] elements [of the play]” means absolutely nothing without context and lengthy explanation, so I will come back to it in a later section of JTC. The following section, “[represented] by people acting and [not] by narration” is self-explanatory. It is the next sentence that stirs up a great deal of argument: “accomplishing by means of pleasure and laughter the catharsis of such emotions.” Many critics dismiss this claim completely, since it seems to make no sense whatsoever. As Geoffrey Arnott comments, “[The Tractacus Coislinianus’ ] definition of comedy and the comic effect, for example, clearly derives from – some have called it a grotesque parody of – the famous Aristotelian definition of tragedy” (305). Leon Golden comments on this specific phrase, “As Bernays recognized . . . the Tractatus is not a reliable guide to genuine Aristotelian doctrine and its reference to an Aristotelian comic catharsis of 'pleasure and laughter' is profoundly in error” (283). The problem most scholars have 10 Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor is the only comedy I can think of off the top of my head that includes a narrator's comments telling what happened to any of the characters after the events of the play.

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with this phrase necessarily follows from the common interpretations of catharsis, particularly as “purging.” Only a truly horrible comedy can achieve a full purging of pleasure and laughter in an audience, such as Adam Sandler’s Little Nicky.11 The final comment in the quote is interesting but unhelpful, since it does not add anything and has no explanation. The author could be implying that comedic plays began simply as a way to make the audience laugh (as in Aristotle's earlier discussion on lampoons and invectives [the Ancient Greek equivalent of Comedy Central’s Roast of {Celebrity}], which I skipped since Aristotle spends the section insulting them), and only later developed into a serious art form in its own right. Ancient Greek scholar Leon Golden wrote an excellent brief analysis of historical comedy criticism and postulated an interesting theory about the central purpose of Aristotelian comic theory in his article “Aristotle on Comedy.” This work begins by analyzing various post-Aristotle historical interpretations on comedy’s central purpose, particularly focusing on many critics disregard of fantasy comedies. The first of these is Duckworth, who describes the central method of comedy as “superiority” and “incongruity,” which are central ideas later picked up in Bergson’s and Freud’s comic theories (284). For Bergson, the audience’s laughter punishes the actor’s portrayed negative behavior, which we assume is itself a reflection of actual negative behavior in the society (284). Freud takes this idea a step farther by linking comedy with aggression, “He sees that much of comedy aims at humiliation and degradation and this would include not only works of social satire, but also other kinds of comic expression that 11 Michael J. Nelson, who was the head writer and star of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a show dedicated to watching awful movies and making fun of them) rated Little Nicky the worst popular comedy of all time (Nelson). If you’ve seen it, you’ll understand why. If you haven’t and want to skip a few thousand years of purgatory, you can mentally flagellate yourself by watching this movie.

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would not have social correction and improvement as their goal, but would simply be manifestations of aggression” (284), which addresses another body of works that Bergson’s theory neglects—comedies without a direct moral purpose. The primary problem Golden has with all of these critics is that their theories do not address fantasy comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Golden credits Erich Segal for his description of fantasy comedies’ purpose as a kind of brief escape from societal repression. However, Golden then focuses on Segal’s failing: He carries his argument too far, however, when he asserts that the aim of true comedy should be to "banish all thought of mortality and morality. It should evoke a laughter which temporarily lifts from us the weight of the world, whether we call it 'das Unbehagen,' loathed melancholy, or gravitas." Segal's theory, which works so well for Plautus and for some works by other great comic writers, is not, however, adequate to explain the nature and significance of the bitter comedies, the comedies of ideas, and the tragicomedies that play such an important role in our comic tradition. We have surveyed the three principles which inform our understanding of the nature of comedy: superiority (involving aggression [Freud]), incongruity [Duckworth], and the "holiday for the superego” [Segal]. The first two serve as explanatory principles for satiric comedies, comedies of ideas, and tragicomedies while the third illuminates the large literature of comic fantasy. (285) Similar to my own method, Golden’s method in reconstructing Aristotelian comic theory is to look at later critics and works and extrapolate the similarities to Ancient Greek

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theory, as well as to analyze the surviving works by Aristotle. Once Golden has established the fundamental elements of comedy, he then moves to the central purpose of comedy according to Aristotle, which he summarizes briefly: My hypothesis is that Aristotelian Comic theory requires the representation of action that is 'ridiculous' and that such action evokes, as the appropriate comic emotion, a form of 'indignation'12 whether or not that indignation is accompanied by laughter. (381) Naturally, “indignation” is a rough translation that needs clearer defining, which Golden describes as a reaction to "(1) unjustified good fortune and (2) whatever violates the laws of proportion and appropriateness" (384). This still only provides a partial picture separated from actual works, and Golden’s primary failing in this essay is to not test his theory in-depth against the surviving comedies.13 However, he does make brief allusions nemesan in various comedies, including post-Aristotle, which I will mention in due course. One last piece of Golden’s revisioning of Aristotelian theory must be discussed before his full comic theory can be addressed: catharsis. Leon Golden has written multiple articles for reinterpreting catharsis,14 and gives a brief version on his argument within this article:

12 “Indignation,” a translation of Greek nemesan, is carefully discussed and defended within Golden’s article, but to rehash his arguments would take almost as much space as the article gives to presenting the argument. For the discussion on nemesan, see Leon Golden’s “Aristotle on Comedy,” pages 287-288. 13 He does discuss his theory against two Ancient Greek comedies, one Old Comedy and the other New Comedy, and one Roman comedy: Aristophanes’ Clouds, Menander’s Dyskolos, and Plautus's Menaechmi, but the entire discussion is not quite an entire page (the end of 388 through most of 389). 14 As his own eighth footnote cites, “My argument for the clarification theory of catharsis is found in the following articles: "Catharsis," Transactions of the American Philological Association, 93 (1962), 5160; “The Clarification Theory of Comedy," Hermes, 104 (1976), 437-52; "Epic, Tragedy, and Catharsis,” Classical Philology, 71 (1976), 77-85; "Mimesis and Katharsis,' Classical Philology, 64

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For some time now, I have argued strenuously against the traditional interpretations of this concept, purgation and purification, because they have no basis whatsoever in the argument of the Poetics itself, and they make little or no aesthetic sense. . . . Since Aristotle explicitly identifies the essential goal and pleasure of all mimesis as learning, and since the Greek word katharsis can mean "clarification," I argue that the internal argument of the Poetics demands that we interpret catharsis as "intellectual clarification." Moreover, since all mimesis involves learning as the essential pleasure, then all forms of mimesis, tragic, comic, epic, etc., must have their own appropriate catharsis. Thus tragic catharsis is the clarification of the pitiable and fearful dimensions of human existence that are generated by the undeserved misfortune of a noble hero, while comic catharsis is the clarification of the "indignation" (nemesan) we feel in regard to those incidents of unjustified good fortune and those examples of inappropriate and incongruous behavior in human existence which do not cause pain. (288) As Golden notes, the traditional interpretations of catharsis do not make sense in the broader discussion on epics and comedies. This is the essential mistake in JTC’s comedy description—that the comic catharsis is a purging of the comic emotions, which he defines as laughter and pleasure. If Golden’s argument about catharsis is correct (or accepted), this provides significant evidence against the TC’s validity as authentic Aristotelian theory. (1969), 145-53; "The Purgation Theory of Catharsis," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXXI (1973), 473-79; and "Toward a Definition of Tragedy," Classical Journal, 72 (1976), 21- 33.”

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Once all of Golden’s major terms are established and (re)defined, he gives his version of the Aristotelian Comedy definition: For Aristotle, then, comedy has the following characteristics: it is the mimesis of an ignoble action which is complete and has magnitude; it is presented by means of language that has been adorned by each of the kinds of linguistic adornment in the various parts of the work; it is presented in a dramatic manner and is not narrated; it accomplishes, through the representation of incidents which evoke our "indignation” (nemesan) the catharsis, i.e., the intellectual clarification of such incidents. Events which evoke our "indignation" (nemesan) in a comic context must meet two specific criteria: (1) they must manifest some dimension of unjustified good fortune or of inappropriate and incongruous behavior; and (2) such incidents (which can be described as examples of error or ugliness) must be presented in such a way that they do not generate any painful feelings on the part of the audience but are clearly recognized as forms of the ridiculous. To be perfectly honest, I think Golden is 95% right on Aristotelian comic theory. In terms of a modern Aristotle’s theory, there are still several problems. First, there is no clarification in the Poetics about what “magnitude” refers to,15 and JTC’s definition says comedy is “lacking in magnitude,” an interpretation I am inclined to agree with, since it

15 There is one passing comment in the Poetics, “We have established, then, that tragedy is an action that is complete and whole and has some magnitude (for there is also such a thing as a whole that has no magnitude)” (29-30). Unfortunately, this comment is not particularly helpful.

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creates a contrast to Aristotle’s tragedy definition.16 Having already discussed magnitude, I will move along. To the point, a modern comedy does not have the kinds of “linguistic adornment” that Aristotle refers to—but it does have a variation of it. A comedy must have the linguistic appropriateness that Golden implies, but the appearance and sound of this has changed. Third, nemesan is not enough to create a comedy. As tragedy generates two emotions within the audience, pity and fear, and comedy should cause two corresponding emotions. Golden’s entire article fails to address why nemesan is directly linked to comedy, which we use as a synonym for humor. Indignation seems to be at odds with humor most of the time. Golden partly addresses this problem by discussing how this indignation is raised, specifically that the audience does not feel any pain. For a modern play, this cannot be true. There are many comedies that cause genuine pain within the audience if they feel even an ounce of sympathy for the characters, yet these plays are still comedies and they can still be quite funny. I will discuss this phenomenon in much more depth when we get to these plays. Indignation is an excellent contrast emotion for pity, which means the second emotion raised should contrast to fear. The criteria to meet nemesan at the end of Golden’s definition is not required in the final modern Aristotelian theory, but should be kept in mind as the basis for nemesan/indignation within a play. The final piece to create a modern Aristotelian comedy definition is the emotion corresponding to fear. The most logical conclusion that both contrasts to fear and ties the

16 Aristotle’s general method throughout the beginning sections of the Poetics is to contrast three major Ancient Greek art forms: Comedy, Tragedy, and Epic. Generally, Comedy and Tragedy are inverted forms of each other, with some notable exceptions such as mode (straight dramatization, no narration),

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second comedic emotion, indignation, inextricably to comedies is mirth. Before I defend that assertion, here is the full definition: Comedy is the imitation of an ignoble action that causes mirth and indignation, is complete, and lacks magnitude; by means of appropriately embellished speech, enacted by persons and not presented through narrative; accomplishing by means of mirth and indignation the catharsis of such emotions. In part, mirth is based on JTC’s definition, a combination of Janko’s pleasure and laughter. Laughter is not an emotion; however, if you combine the emotion behind laughter (amusement, for example) with pleasure you end up with mirth. For this thesis, mirth is defined as “Pleasurable feeling; enjoyment, gratification; joy, happiness” and “Gaiety or lightness of mood or mind, esp. as manifested in laughter; merriment, hilarity” (“mirth, n.” OED online). I maintain Golden’s description that comedy portrays an ignoble action, but that should be clarified for a modern audience. We are both using ignoble action in the same sense Aristotle used it in the Poetics, which is an action that we might call anti-heroic and contrasts to the noble actions in tragedy. Ignoble actions are anything that meets Golden’s criteria for causing nemesan, in short “unjustified good fortune” or “inappropriate and incongruous behavior.” As with the various other definitions, “is complete” remains unchanged. However, what “complete” means could vary by the interpreter. I take it as internal coherency—a play must be sufficient unto itself to tell an entire story with a beginning, middle, and end. This story should include the general structure of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, though not necessarily in this order (beginning in media res

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is certainly possible). The play should not require extensive commentary or explanation to achieve a basic understanding, nor should it require a sequel or prequel to understand the current play. Lacking multitude in this theory implies that the story is essentially selfcontained—the only people that matter are the people within the play, and they are the only people affected by the action.17 This helps to deter the tragic emotions, avoiding pity for the characters or fear that the audience could be in a similar situation or be affected by it. The second major section of the definition begins with “by means of appropriately embellished speech,” which implies the style of writing/speaking in the play. As I mentioned before, comedic speech is both everyday and exceptional, a perfection of the ordinary. In other words, a comedic character should sound like an ordinary person could sound if he were extraordinarily suited to his “role,” such as a buffoon, a trickster, or any other general character type. This will become more apparent when discussing individual plays. The enacted by persons without narration comment should be uncontroversial, though there is occasional narration in drama. The final clause is the most contentious bit in JTC, and requires extensive explanation even in Golden’s version. For the modern variation, it is worth repeating that this is Golden’s version of catharsis, an intellectual clarification that demonstrates an obscured truth. We, the audience, through the clarification of catharsis should understand why something is both funny and causes our indignation—the paradox must be resolved and yet also maintained. The emotions do not end, which is the problem with both other

17 This should be generally true, but I would not say an exception is impossible. The action should still affect a relatively small group, as opposed to tragedy, where the action could cause an entire society to suffer (Oedipus Rex again being possibly the best example).

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translations of catharsis (purgation and sublimation). However, we understand the paradox and accept it as truth. The audience gains a new perspective on the situation, themselves, or both.

Tractacus Coislinianus Overview The TC has several sections following the definition of comedy that in part mirror the Poetics, but it has few details. The first of these sections is called “The nature of laughter” and is divided into two subsections, “Laughter from diction” and “Laughter from incidents.” Unfortunately, half of it is nonsensical without Janko’s extensive additions and clarifications (44-45).18 They do contain some interesting ideas that can be useful in analyzing comedic techniques, which is useful when analyzing how a comedy creates mirth. The division itself is also useful, since it implies that comedy within the author’s version of the play arises from either the words themselves or the action, both in an individual moment and in the play as a whole. There are other types of humor that are generally not in the script itself but are present in performances, which include body language, timing/rhythm, props, costume, etc.19 These are the pieces added by the acting group and do not apply to our general discussion. Of the two categories within JTC, “comedy from diction” is divided into seven categories, almost none of which are well described. Three of them are or include forms of repetition and redundancy,20 which it divides into synonymy, verbosity, and paronymy. Synonymy is using two synonyms 18 Janko’s general method was to preserve the base text as much as possible, but to add clarifying words to complete phrases or fill in missing information. The amount of his additions makes how poor the base text is within these two sections overwhelmingly obvious. 19 It is worth noting that these can be put into the script, depending on how much the playwright wants to “direct” his or her play. Edward Albee and Suzan-Lori Parks are good examples of current American playwrights who include extensive “directorial” notes in the script. 20 Get it? JTC’s synonymy.

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within the same sentence for the same meaning, thus creating a repeated meaning without repeating the same word. JTC’s example is “I'm here and am arrived” (44). Verbosity is name repetition, and paronymy is any alteration of a word to change its structure or meaning, including repeating syllables within a word (Euripidipides), removing letters ("I'm called Midas the joke" [instead of "joker" {Janko 44}]), and adding to words (worstest). The other four types don’t make sense without Janko’s excessive elaboration. Two are missing their titles, which Janko supplies as “Parody?”, and “metaphor,” but neither has a useful explanation. One sounds like puns but the explanation does not make sense. The last one is a joke, “Seventh, from the form of the diction” (44). That is all it says. I have no intention of compiling a definitive modern version of this list, but I will refer to various techniques in relation to individual plays and give my partial list in the conclusion. The “Laughter from the Incidents” section is somewhat more useful. “Laughter from the incidents” is divided into nine categories. The first, deception, has no explanation but one example, “Strepsiades believing that the story about the flea was true” (44). This is a reference to Aristophanes’ The Clouds, though not a particularly illuminating one. The second category is what I would call imitation, described as making something or someone resemble either a greater or lesser object, such as a man pretending to be a god or a god pretending to be a man. The rest of the categories are short enough to simply quote: (iii) from the impossible. (iv) From the possible and inconsequential. (v) From things contrary to expectation. (vi) From making the characters tend to be wicked.

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(vii) From using vulgar dancing. (viii) When someone who has the power [to decide] lets go the most important things and takes those most inferior. (ix) When the argument is disjointed and lacking any sequence. (44-45) It is worth noting that Janko makes almost no additions to these seven to clarify meaning.21 Several of these are good points, but the level of insight is far below Aristotle’s in the Poetics. Some of these, however, do have potential for pointing at comedy tropes—particularly i-vi, since these describe major plot techniques. By major plot techniques I mean any technique around which the entire plot is constructed, such as Viola disguising herself as a man in Twelfth Night (i) or the dead cat in The Lieutenant of Inishmore (iv). Most plots revolve around some single incident, which can demonstrate a major comedic technique. I will compile a new list as we proceed through individual plays, in part based upon this list. We can pretty safely cut out vii-ix for now, though viii will probably reappear in a better-worded form. The rest of JTC’s base text is pretty much useless, so I will go through it quickly. There are brief comments on the “objects of laughter,” but it boils down to “comedy does not outright abuse individuals since it insults them through innuendo,” which is useless in itself—however, the section does end with an interesting comment, “The joker wishes to expose errors of soul and body” (45). The section after this is a single highly fallacious sentence about catharsis in tragedy and comedy, “There wishes to be a due proportion of terror in tragedies and of the laughable in comedies” (45). On tragedy, it is just plain wrong. On comedy, it could be right, but it does not have anything to do with catharsis by

21 His one addition is not particularly helpful—I think it makes the description more confusing.

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itself. To say that the two should be “in proportion” to each other is bizarre, since neither terror nor laughter are quantifiable. However, the idea of comparing the general level of pity and fear in tragedy to the general level of mirth and indignation in comedy as a means of judging their artistic merit is intriguing, but beyond the scope of this thesis. Following this is a new major section, which JTC labels “The parts of comedy,” beginning with the “qualitative.” These are called the “qualitative” parts because these qualities cannot be measured: The elements of comedy are plot, character, reasoning, diction, song and spectacle. (a) Comic plot is one which is structured around laughable actions. (b) Characters of comedy are the buffoonish, the ironical and the boasters. (c) The parts of reasoning are two, general statement and proof. There are five [kinds of artless proof]: oaths, agreements, testimonies, ordeals and laws. (d) Comic diction is common and popular. The comic poet should assign his characters their ancestral dialect, and himself the local one. (e) Song is particular to [the art of] music; hence [the poet] will need to take his starting-points complete in themselves from that [art]. (f) Spectacle supplies * * as a great need to dramas. Plot, diction and song are observed in all comedies, reasonings, character and spectacle in [not] a few. (45-46) Many of these are overly obvious without insightful commentary, which does not sound like Aristotle. Discarding (f) as essentially nonsense, (a) as too obvious, (b) as too

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shallow, (c) as nonessential and (e) as irrelevant and nonessential, we are left with (d) alone. However, (d) does explain comic language fairly well—the comic characters should sound like real people from their time and place, whereas tragic characters (often) have a sense of timelessness. I have discussed (a) multiple times, but it is worth restating that “laughable actions” is a misleading description for comedies. Many comedies are fundamentally serious and/or disturbing, and contain an abundance of actions that are not “laughable.” However, the playwright’s treatment of these actions and the general mood of the play can turn a horrific event into comedy, such as old women poisoning people in Arsenic and Old Lace. (b) does describe three types of characters often found in comedy, but by no means all characters. Nor are these characters exclusive to comedy— Shakespeare often includes a buffoon in his tragedies, and no one boasts more than Falstaff, who is predominantly in history plays. As for (c), I do not know enough about rhetoric to see the connection between these ideas and comedy. (e) is cultural specific, and may still apply to musical comedies, but that is outside of my scope. (f) unfortunately is so vague as to be nonsensical, but highly evocative—though this evocativeness may be from the nonsensicality. The section following the “Qualitative parts of comedy” is, as you might guess, the “Quantitative parts of comedy.” JTC’s description of this is rather straightforward: There are four parts of comedy: (a) prologue, (b) choral [part], (c) episode and (d) exit. (a) A prologue is a part of a comedy that is up to the entry of the chorus. (b) A choral [part] is the song sung by the chorus, when it has sufficient magnitude.

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(c) An episode is the [part] between two choral songs. (d) An exit is the [part] uttered at the end by the chorus. (46) On first reading, this seems either a serious oversimplification or too culturally specific to be applicable. On second reading, it seems to be both. On the third reading, it becomes easier to create rough analogies—the prologue is exposition, the episode is the main action of the play, the choral part is the secondary action and implications of the action on the audience and/or minor characters, and the exit is the denouement. The chorus’ part in Ancient Greek theater is the hardest part for modern audiences to understand. The chorus often functioned as the representative Greek people, sometimes even as the “ideal” audience reaction. In this way the chorus functions both as minor characters and audience. The final section in JTC, full of wisdom and truth, is “The three kinds of comedy . . . (a) old, which goes to excess in the laughable; (b) new, which abandons this, and inclines towards the grand; and (c) middle, which is mixed from both” (Janko 46). This, again, is both overly obvious, oversimplified, culture-specific, and more than a little misleading. Most scholars agree that the division between old and new comedy is fairly straightforward, but middle comedy is almost impossible to pinpoint—particularly with major comic playwrights like Aristophanes, who is either a late old comedian or an early middle comedian. None of this is helpful in a modern comedic interpretation, except perhaps the basic divisions—excess laughter, grand inclinations, or some point in between. I will substitute indignation for grand inclinations22 and mirth for laughter, and we have a working scale for interpreting comedies. In modern Aristotelian theory, every 22 Not to say that they are in any way the same thing, though “grand inclinations” could certainly lead to an increase in comic indignation.

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comedy will have some degree of mirth and indignation, but the relative amounts of each are directly related to the type of comedy produced—for example, tragicomedies will focus less on mirth and more on indignation, fantasy comedies more on mirth than indignation. Most plays fall somewhere in between. We can safely assume that Aristotle wrote about many of these topics in the lost half of the Poetics, but how much of the TC’s theory is from Aristotle is far from clear. Many of the TC’s comments and observations are oversimplified, superfluous, or worse still, wrong. But there are a few comments and overarching ideas that have merit— particularly the breakdown between qualitative and quantitative parts of comedy and the analysis of comedic diction versus comedic incidents.

A Modern Aristotle in a Nutshell The center of this theory is the new definition of Aristotelian comedy: Comedy is the imitation of an ignoble action that causes mirth and indignation, is complete, and lacks magnitude; by means of embellished speech, enacted by persons and not presented through narrative; accomplishing by means of mirth and indignation the catharsis of such emotions. Comedy should invoke both mirth and indignation in an audience, though the proportions of each will vary. Mirth is a combination of pleasure and amusement, which makes the indignation compatible with comedy. Indignation (Golden’s nemesan) is caused by an ignoble action,23 which is “unjustified good fortune” or “inappropriate and incongruous behavior.” These central emotions lead to a comic catharsis, which is an intellectual 23 Not necessarily a single act, but the action of the play as a whole.

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clarification and varies from subgenre to subgenre and work to work. It can range from a moral lesson, the classic “moral of the story,” a light-hearted self-mockery,24 or even outrage against a specific social issue. As for other major elements of a comedy, there are few requirements. Aristotle analyzed nearly every piece of tragedy, and would have done the same for comedy. He had many recommendations for making excellent tragedies, and ranked different techniques’ effectiveness. Many of his judgments were based on believability, since in tragedy you must be able to identify with the sufferers. However, comedy is less restrictive than tragedy, as Aristotle noted in the surviving section of the Poetics. Tragedies were generally based on historical characters because if the story was based on reality the audience would have an easier time suspending disbelief.25 But one of the fundamental characteristics of comedy is that they are ludicrous—they do not have to conform entirely to reality. Instead, they can create their own world to conform to, and as long as the comedy is consistent unto itself, it remains “believable.” For example, if a playwright creates a genius rogue who tricks everyone around him and refuses to even consider marriage, it does not make sense that in the last possible moment he would suddenly change his mind and allow himself to be married if the play has not led us to accept this change. However, that kind of startling and unbelievable switch can itself be used as a comic technique, as we will see in The Beggar’s Opera.

24 Leon Golden argues that this is the indignation in fantasy comedies (289), which I will discuss in more detail later. 25 Naturally, Aristotle didn’t use the term “suspension of disbelief,” but his comments are surprisingly similar: “…comic poets construct their plots on the basis of general probabilities…in tragedy they still cling to the historically given names. The reason is that what is possible is persuasive; so what has not happened we are not yet ready to believe is possible, while what has happened is, we feel, obviously possible: for it would not have happened if it were impossible” (Aristotle 33).

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Thus, to some extent at least, every comedy creates its own specific rules, but follows the general rule of our modern Aristotle’s definition. These specific rules and how they still fit within the modern Aristotle’s theory will be a large part of my analysis, and should also shed light on other general rules, trends, and techniques in Englishlanguage comedies.

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Chapter 2: In Practice Early English Comedy: The Second Shepherds’ Play26 The Second Shepherds’ Play is quite possibly the earliest play in English that could possibly be considered a comedy. It is generally classified as a mystery play, since it was written and performed as a part of a mystery play cycle. However, it does not fit the general character of a mystery play. Mystery plays usually present a section of the Bible, whereas The Second Shepherd’s Play27 does include the nativity scene, but though you would expect it to be central to a mystery play, it is instead a subplot or contrast to the primary action.28 M.F. Vaughan’s general overview of SSP’s criticism is enlightening for a quick look at the various interpretations of the play. As Vaughan notes, the play uses almost constant sets of three: three locales, three primary characters per location, three major scenes, three gifts in the nativity scene, and three major tones to the play (one per locale, Vaughan 356). Most importantly, many critics have set Mak and Gill as a diabolical contrast to the three “good” shepherds, which Vaughan strenuously denies, since Mak has much in common with the three shepherds (357ff). The general outline of the play, using this tripartite description, begins with the three primary shepherds at “the moors” (Gassner 102), with a general tone of complaint. Each shepherd is in some way bound—the first is bound to the land and the lord who owns it, and is never allowed rest since he must constantly work. The second is bound to his wife and laments marriage. The third is bound to his employer. Once the initial rounds 26 I am using John Gassner’s modernized version from the anthology Medieval and Tudor Drama, Applause, 1987. 27 Hereafter abbreviated SSP. 28 This is admittedly a controversial claim, since many scholars have argued that the nativity is the primary plot and that Mak and the sheep are, as M.F. Vaughan amusing alludes, “the so-called subplot” (355)—but a casual reader would automatically disagree, since Mak’s plot takes up the largest portion of the play and is by far the most memorable.

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of complaints are finished, Mak the thief29 enters and pretends not to know the shepherds. Amusingly, Mak is not bound in the same way as any of the shepherds, per se—though he does have a wife, their marriage is relatively happy (excepting the drunkenness and excessive childbirths, but those may be lies given the context [ln. 237-252]), and there are no indications that he is a cuckold, as the second shepherd seems to be. Mak is, you might say, self-employed, thus avoiding the third shepherd’s problem. He never complains about his “lord,” as the first shepherd does. The shepherds eventually force Mak to acknowledge that he does indeed know them, and then also force him to sleep between the other shepherds, so that he cannot sneak out from amongst them to steal one of their sheep. Unfortunately for the shepherds, Mak knows magic and he’s not afraid to use it, so he casts a spell over them, steals a sheep, takes it home, and comes back to lie among them, pretending he slept there the whole night. Even with this “evidence,” the shepherds are suspicious and force Mak to take them to his house, which initiates the second section. In this we already see the primary “ignoble action,” the sheep thievery. The lack of magnitude is also apparent, since this incident on a literal level is rather unimportant, though Mak could be hanged for stealing yet another sheep—it does not have broad-reaching social implications. Embellished speech is pretty obvious in Gassner’s modernized version, since it is written in poetic lines and has an amusing mixture of earthy language and poetic syntax, such as “I am worthy my meat, / For in a pinch can I get / More than they that swink and sweat / All day” (311-315). This shows a mixture of inverted syntax, “For in a pinch can I get” and amusingly visceral language,

29 Not to be confused with the Knife.

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“swink and sweat.”30 There is no shortage of mirth in this section, particularly in the second shepherd’s complaints about his wife, As sharp as a thistle, as rough as a briar; She is browed like a bristle with sour-looking cheer. . . . She is as great as a whale, She has a gallon of gall; By Him that died for us all, I would I had run till I lost her! (101-2, 105-8) The first and second shepherds gang up on the third to complain about lazy employees, which prompts his attacks on employers. Our indignation is also aroused that Mak has stolen a sheep and therefore received unjustified good fortune for his inappropriate behavior—we know that he will be and must be punished for this behavior, but we want to see how his scheme will fail. The indignation in this play is more light-hearted, but it does make a symbolic allusion to our own failings, the Christian original sin and universal sinfulness, thus putting us all in Mak’s shoes once he is caught, which is further developed in the second and third sections. Section two is the search for the sheep in Mak and Gill’s house. This section has a great deal of farce, which contrasts dramatically—jarringly, even —with the third section. The sheep itself is disguised as a sleeping baby in a cradle (parody of the lamb of god in the manger), giving an excuse for the shepherds to avoid it, since waking a sleeping new baby is a quick but excessively painful form of suicide. Arguably the most amusing part of the whole section is Mak and Gill’s refrain, which is variations of “If I am not true and

30 There is nothing particularly important about this passage, but I rather like the word “swink.”

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loyal, to God I pray / That this be the first meal I shall eat this day” (522-3), which is a parody of the Eucharist—literally eating the flesh of the lamb, typifying Christ.31 The shepherds search for the sheep to no avail, since Gill keeps them from bothering her “child,” and so they leave. This is the moment where the villains seem to have won the day, and their unjustified good fortune will go unpunished. However, they are defeated by the shepherds’ charity. The shepherds return to give the child a gift, and in so doing discover that the child is their lamb, which leads to a hilarious section where the shepherds have discovered the truth but Mak and Gill can’t tell that they have seen the “child,” and therefore keep make up various excuses for his deformities. For a moment it seems the shepherds will punish Mak and Gill both to the full extent of the law, namely execution. But the third shepherd recommends a greatly reduced sentence—tossing Mak repeatedly up and down in a “canvas,” or sheet. This shows mercy and charity, reflecting Christ-like qualities in the shepherds. The mirth in this section need hardly be further expounded, but the indignation is more subtle. The audience should be offended at Mak and Gill’s gall and cunning even as they are amused by it, that they would make outlandish claims that contain their literal meaning, that they wish to eat the “child” in their cradle. The audience wants the shepherds to become suspicious, but they do not. This can be somewhat self-convicting, as the audience members reflect on times they have been duped by similarly sneaky people, such as car salesmen and telemarketers. In uncovering Mak and Gill’s deceit, the audience’s sense of justice is appeased and the act of mercy helps to clarify the audience’s proper reaction, which is further enhanced by the third section. 31 I use parody throughout this section not in the pejorative sense (“mockery”), but rather as a literalization of metaphor for comedic purposes.

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The third section is the supposedly central part of the play, the traditional nativity story with angelic herald, three “wise” men, a new star in the sky, and the three gifts for baby Jesus. The shepherds show that they are acquainted with Jewish scripture by relating Isaiah’s prophecies (ln. 675-85). This story highlights the parodies of the previous sections—the Lamb of God lying in a cradle, the three visitors searching for him, and the mother figure standing over him. The lamb was literal, and the men searching for him were not coming as servants to a master, but as owners looking for stolen property. The punishers from the second section become the repentant sinners in the third, shown mercy by the coming of Christ as they showed mercy on Mak. This is the Moral Hammer, that all people are guilty before Christ and need mercy. So the general catharsis of this play is that we should have indignation, but only at a proper level, and this indignation should lead to mercy. This is much easier with mirth, since no one executes people while laughing about their crimes.32 Mirth ameliorates indignation and puts it into its proper context, allowing for the emotional clarification of catharsis. The central comedic plot technique (JTC’s “Laughter from the Incidents”) is parody, which we can define in this play as creating a variation of incident or idea that reflects the original enough to be recognizable but which is used to a significantly different end. In the premise of the play he Lamb of God becomes a literal lamb, the three wise men become bickering and complaining shepherds, and the nativity story, which at its heart is the search for the Christ child, becomes the search for a stolen lamb. If the Christ child is a gift to humanity, the opposite of a gift is theft. A second, much more subtle technique I call ironic priorities. This is any plot technique used where characters or, as in this case, the play itself focuses or magnifies something usually insignificant and 32 Unless they are utterly psychotic.

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makes it of central importance, often by diminishing something that should be important. In this case, the nativity story takes a backseat to a petty theft.33 There is no shortage of verbal humor in this play as well, and at least one technique is quite uncommon—purposeful anachronism. There are many references throughout the play to the Virgin, Our Lady, the Holy Child, Christ’s Holy Name, and innumerable others. Since these comments precede the nativity story, it is both foreshadowing—tying the two main divisions of the plot together—and purposefully jarring. There are simply too many references, of too many different types, to be accidental or coincidental—it must serve a conscious artistic effect, in this case both comedy and linking the two sections of the play. A second technique is the straight lampoon, usually of one of the character’s wife as long as said wife is absent. The first to open this theme is the second shepherd (previously quoted), furthered by Mak once he appears. In many ways, SSP is unique in the body of English-language comedies. It is a comedy that was written without intending to be a comedy per se, since it is primarily a mystery play. However, it is clear from reading other mystery plays that SSP does not fit in their general scheme. The Biblical story it portrays is secondary in length to the farcical stolen lamb story, though the stolen lamb parallels and parodies the traditional nativity story. If we ignore the traditional classification of the play, SSP is clearly fits the Modern Aristotelian comedy as well as a mystery play.

33 Another excellent example of this is Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.

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Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama – Ben Jonson’s Volpone Few plays (if any) were written between SSP and Elizabethan drama that can be considered important comedies (and to be overly technical Volpone is a Jacobean comedy, since it was first performed in 1606, three years after Queen Elizabeth’s death). In many ways this comedy embodies both the very old (Old Greek) comic form with something that would still be quite popular today. Much of Volpone has a timeless feel, particularly since it can be considered an attack on Capitalistic ideation.34 As the Norton introduction comments, This dark satire on human rapacity is set in Venice, but its true target is the city of London, or the city that, Jonson feared, London was about to become. It is a place devoted to commerce and mired in corruption, populated by greedy fools and conniving rascals…. Jonson was deeply disturbed by the rise of a protocapitalist economic order that seemed to emphasize competition and the acquisition of material goods over reciprocal goodwill and mutual obligation. On the other hand, Jonson was also fascinated by the entrepreneurial potential liberated by the new economic order. (Greenblatt et al., “Volpone” 1334) The description of “a place devoted to commerce and mired in corruption, populated by greedy fools and conniving rascals” certainly fits America and most other capitalist countries. Volpone asks the question “What does a fundamentally competitive and amoral culture look like on the microcosmic level?” Thus we have a small representative community in a capitalistic crux—a wealthy man apparently near death without a clear

34 That would make an excellent paper in itself, but I will keep my comments brief.

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successor must choose where his money will go. Like around a man dying in the desert, the vultures start circling Volpone, waiting to pick him clean the moment after he shuffles off this mortal coil. This animal imagery is particularly apropos to Volpone, since Jonson uses extensive animal references in his character names and traits. Volpone’s subtitle, the Old Fox, hints immediately that there is an animal fable element in the play. Volpone’s name literally translates as fox, and several other characters are also significant. The names of the three main petitioners for Volpone’s inheritance each translates to a different variety of carrion bird—respectively a vulture, a raven, and a crow (Voltore Corbaccio, Corvino). Volpone’s trickery makes his name fairly self-explanatory, since foxes are generally trickster figures. Mosca’s name translates as fly, and he is described in the character list as Volpone’s “parasite,” which the Norton editors elide as “servant.” Mosca is not a parasite per say, but utilizes his position and unique talents to further Volpone’s plans until his machinations eventually backfire twice, the second time because he betrays Volpone. Mosca is a parasite in the common sense because he feeds off of Volpone and even though their relationship begins as symbiotic, eventually Mosca destroys the partnership, which makes their relationship overall parasitic. His name provides a kind of foreshadowing and warning about this betrayal. Volpone has received surprisingly disparate criticism, particularly in trying to classify it. Some critics, such as Herford and Simpson, argue that it is closer akin to a tragedy than a comedy, or, as Northrop Frye argues, that Volpone is a “comic imitation of a tragedy” (qtd. in Davison 151). This too is not quite right, since the play is clearly a comedy throughout—we never feel that Volpone is a hero, but he is our favorite villain. We assume he will fail, which is why the trial scene is shocking—the villains win and the

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morally upright are condemned. However, Northrop Frye’s point should not be ignored— if we take Volpone as a mock tragic hero, his eventual confession is a mock redemption that fulfills the “tragedy,” wherein Volpone redeems himself by sacrificing everything to see justice done to all of the villains, including himself. Since this is a rather elaborate play for the sake of brevity I will focus primarily on the central plot, which is essentially Volpone and Mosca’s shenanigans. This means I will almost entirety ignore Nano and Androgyno,35 Sir Politic Would-be and Peregrine. Both of these pairs have entire scenes devoted to them, but they are somewhat extraneous to the central plot. Volpone and Mosca’s basic trick is simple and elegant, and wildly successful. Volpone feigns various symptoms of a terminal illness as Mosca convinces each petitioner to present Volpone with an elaborate gift to ensure that he (or she, once Lady Would-Be joins the throng) becomes Volpone’s uncontested heir. Once the gifts begin, Mosca turns it into a competition for most elaborate gift, constantly upping the stakes for the suitors. The play proper36 opens with Volpone and Mosca preparing their scam, but also shows us the inverted values within the play. Volpone’s second speech makes earning money through labor sound villainous, “…I use no trade, no venture; / I wound no earth with plowshares; fat no beasts / To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron, / Oil, corn, or men, to grind ‘em into powder…” (1.1.33-36). The heavily biased language, “wound,” “fat…beasts / To feed the shambles [slaughterhouse],” and “grind ‘em into powder” for

35 The only note I made on Nano and Androgyno for writing this section was “A dwarf and a hermaphrodite walk into a bar…” I had meant that embryonic joke as a placeholder, but never found anything important to say about them. Thus I will let that comment suffice. 36 Excluding “The Argument,” an acrostic poem of Volpone’s name, and the prologue.

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not only agricultural products, but also men, shows the brutality in what we usually consider a virtuous, hard-working person’s life. Scene two continues these preparations and includes a rather odd conversation on hermaphrodites. In the midst of jokes and general ludicrousness Mosca makes a significant point, that money “creates” intelligence, “Oh, no, rich / Implies [intelligent]. Hood an ass in reverend purple, / so you can hide his two ambitious ears, / And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor” (1.2.111-14). Unfortunately for the audience, this one is not an inverted value within the play, but rather within their (and our) society—money buys you the appearance of intelligence or whatever other trait you would like to feign, such as kindness, modesty, or generosity. It is also worth noting that Volpone makes a passing reference at the end of the scene that he has been preparing this con for three years already, and we are viewing the culmination. The third scene opens up the petitioners’ competition with Voltore and his gift of a golden plate. Voltore spends most of the section conversing with Mosca, who demonstrates his verbal agility by heaping backhanded compliments on Voltore, essentially describing a fundamentally corrupt lawyer as if it was a flattering profession: I oft have heard him say how he admired Men of your large profession, that could speak To every cause, and things mere contraries, Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law; That with the most quick agility could turn And re-turn, make knots and undo them, Give forked counsel, take provoking gold

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On either hand, and put it up…(1.3.52-59) Mosca then rushes Voltore out since Corbaccio has arrived, and then repeats the general process of flattery and false assurances of Volpone’s favor, but also adds competitive gifting. Corbaccio is easily duped and makes his gift larger than Voltore’s. However, Mosca then shows his tendency to overreach himself—he adds to Volpone’s plan a brilliant touch, that Corbaccio must disinherit his son and name Volpone as his heir. The ironic inversion is rather amusing—Corbaccio is convinced to do the exact opposite of his intentions. Volpone approves the plan in hindsight within the same scene, but makes a comment that foreshadows every villain’s eventual destruction, which is also a quote from Seneca, “What a rare punishment / Is avarice to itself” (1.4.142-3). The gift-giving culminates in this act with Corvino’s appearance in the following scene, which includes the absolutely hilarious episode where Mosca convinces Corvino that Volpone is deaf, and therefore they can both shout insults at him. After Corvino’s exit Mosca makes a passing remark about Corvino’s wife’s beauty to Volpone, and the subsequent conversation makes Volpone enraptured by Mosca’s description, and Volpone plans to disguise himself so he may look upon her. Thus concludes the first act, which amply demonstrates the Aristotelian comedic characteristics. This play is filled to the brim with ignoble action—not even one “good” character is introduced in the first act; it is populated by villains, rogues, schemers and scoundrels. In the entirely of the play there are only two fundamentally virtuous characters, Bonario and Celia (Whose names are derived from “good” and literally translated “heaven,” respectively). Mirth should be apparent throughout the act—there is no shortage of amusement in seeing a villain out-villained, as well as the various amusing incidents such

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as Corvino shouting insults at the “deaf” Volpone. Indignation is aroused along two different lines: first in Volpone and Mosca’s unjustified good fortune, and second by the inappropriate petitioners behavior obviously derived from avarice instead of legitimate love for Volpone. Embellished speech is still straightforward, since the play is written predominantly in iambic pentameter, although it generally still sounds conversational. Jonson was particularly good at balancing the embellishments of iambic pentameter with the cadence of regular speech so that it sounds elevated and common both. The second act focuses primarily on Celia. Volpone eventually manages to see her while in disguise, and then enlists Mosca to help him seduce her. Corvino demonstrates his overwhelming jealousy by verbally abusing her, threatening violence, setting physical boundaries that she cannot leave and even threatens her with a chastity belt. However, Mosca intercedes with news that Volpone is beginning to recover, but that he needs a “young woman . . . Lusty and full of juice, to sleep by him” (2.6.34-35). The second act concludes once Corvino decides that he shall prostitute his wife to Volpone and then invites her to Volpone’s feast, without informing her of his and Mosca’s deal. Corvino’s behavior arouses indignation by being wildly inappropriate—first he is overwhelmingly jealous and then his jealousy is overwhelmed by his greed so that he agrees to prostitute his wife. Mirth is hard to come by in the second act’s first half, but the sheer absurdity and audacity of Mosca’s apparently successful scheme lightens the second half’s mood. The third act opens with a lovely example of extreme hubris as Mosca provides an encomium to himself in a soliloquy. As Act II centered on Celia, Act III focuses on Mosca’s various machinations, particularly along two lines. The first involves Bonario, whom Mosca has brought to Volpone’s to turn against his father for disinheriting him.

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The second involves Celia again as she arrives at Volpone’s, who then tries to seduce her and when that is unsuccessful eventually tries to rape her. This is where Mosca’s plan falls apart—since Bonario has hidden in Volpone’s house, he witnesses these events and saves Celia. Corbaccio still makes Volpone his heir shortly after this, and Voltore discovers this fact—but quick-thinking Mosca again turns this to his advantage by convincing Voltore that Bonario is a villain who is forcing Celia to lie about what happened. Indignation against Volpone, Mosca, and Corvino continues and escalates as Celia’s personal danger increases—but unlike in the second act, much of this is humorous and increases our mirth. For example, when Corvino tries to argue the virtue of having his wife sleep with another man, which would probably be a more effective argument if made to anyone other than his wife, “I grant you, if I thought it were a sin / I would not urge you…But here ‘tis contrary / A pious work, mere charity, for physic, / And honest polity to assure mine own” (3.7.57-58, 64-66). This is even more amusing when Volpone uses Corvino's awfulness (that Volpone prompted and inspired) to convince Celia that she should be Volpone’s mistress: Assure thee, Celia, he that would sell thee Only for hope of gain, and that uncertain, He would have sold his part of paradise For ready money, had he met a copeman…. Thou hast in place of a base husband found A worthy lover. Use thy fortune well, With secrecy and pleasure. See, behold What thou art queen of, not in expectation,

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As I feed others, but possessed and crowned. (3.7.141-44, 186-89) It actually isn’t a bad offer—her husband is obviously a horrible person, and Volpone is being both kind and generous.37 Celia, however, is fundamentally and perhaps twodimensionally virtuous—she first attempts to appeal to Volpone’s virtue to help her escape, but then tells him in no uncertain terms that she would rather die than lose her virtue. The audience thinks that Volpone and the various other villains will shortly be punished once Benvolio saves Celia and both head to the court. What the audience or reader should find strange at this point is how early in the play it still is—the end of the third act, with five acts total. Either this play has the lengthiest denouement ever written until J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or all is not as it seems, which is hinted in the final act of the scene, as Mosca prepares the villains’ defense—deny everything and frame the accusers. Ignoring the first three scenes of act four,38 the pre-trial begins in 4.4 with Mosca prepping the fools, Voltore, Corvino and Corbaccio, for court and playing each one against the others. Each believes he is the sole heir and that Mosca is simply duping the other two. Scene five begins the trial in earnest, wherein Mosca presents his version of the events in Act III, including evidence and several witness accounts. First, Mosca uses Bonario’s disinheritance as proof that Corvino distrusted Bonario and disapproved of his “adultery” with Celia. One of the advocates comments that Bonario’s reputation “was ever fair and honest,” which Voltore also uses as evidence, “So much more full of danger

37 Though he is planning date rape if things don’t go so well, so we should probably take “kind and generous” with a grain of salt. 38 Subplot and minor characters compose the first three scenes, none of which are particularly relevant to the main plot or even very funny.

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is his vice, / That can beguile so under shade of virtue” (4.5.60-62). Voltore then proceeds to claim Bonario was in Volpone’s house for the express purpose of murdering his father, and seals his argument with pre-emptive counter-accusations that Bonario and Celia were going to try to discredit Volpone and Corvino to save themselves. With Corvino and Corbaccio’s corroboration, and even Lady Would-Be’s help, Bonario and Celia have no chance of getting justice, and are even condemned themselves. This is the climax for indignation—the good are punished and the guilty go free. The values society claims to uphold have been cast down and the vices reign supreme. There is still no shortage of mirth, particularly in seeing Mosca continue to dupe the multitude of fools, but this mirth is still outweighed by the indignation caused by the villains’ unjustified good fortune and the utter perversion of their and our society’s values. The fifth act’s opening makes an interesting parallel to the third act—instead of Mosca giving a soliloquy about how awesome he is, Volpone reflects on his personal performance and the actions of the previous act, with a few interesting implications. The most important comment he makes is that, “I ne’er was in dislike with my disguise / Till this fled moment; here ‘twas good, in private, / But in your public…” (5.1.2-4). He then switches topics entirely and start showing physical stress reactions, muscle cramps and a “dead palsy.” Volpone regrets that his tricks, jokes, and schemes have reached outside of his home and forced him to use them in public. In his own house, they are relatively harmless, but in public he must commit a crime. This shows that even before he confesses, he is already somewhat repentant—though this does not stop him from continuing his tricks within his own home. He does seem to regret, even if just slightly,

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having to condemn Bonario and Celia to save himself. This is crucial to inspiring his confession and reduces the audience’s indignation against him. The second scene resumes Mosca and Volpone’s original plans, and Volpone makes an odd observation about the various petitioners, that even when together and each sees proof that they are being duped, none of them even begins to suspect Mosca or Volpone of treachery. Mosca replies: Mosca: True, they will not see’t. Too much light blinds ‘em, I think. Each of ‘em Is so possessed and stuffed with his own hopes That anything unto the contrary, Never so true or never so apparent, Never so palpable, they will resist it— Volpone: Like a temptation of the devil. (5.2.22-28) The ironic inversions abound—usually someone looks for evidence of treachery, as opposed to ignoring blatant evidence of treachery and instead searching for a false truth. Instead of resisting treachery, they are resisting the proof of it as if it were a devilish temptation, which means they are embracing the actual devilish temptation. Afterward Volpone has himself declared dead and Mosca is announced as his heir. Volpone then watches from a hiding place as Mosca makes fools out of the petitioners—Corvino is blackmailed as a cuckold in title if not in truth, Corbaccio as an attempted poisoner and an actual perjurer, and Voltore is only threatened with the knowledge that Mosca and he both know the law’s consequences if Voltore’s part in these actions is revealed. In scene six Mosca reveals his plan to cozen Volpone now that he is declared dead, which is

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followed by two scenes of Volpone in disguise tormenting the petitioners. Scene eight contains a plot piece that is rather odd to a modern audience—Mosca enters in aristocratic attire to annoy the petitioners, and in the following scene is confronted by Voltore. The important point that a modern audience would not immediately apprehend is that Mosca has committed a crime—dressing above his birth station, which increases his eventual punishment. Once Voltore has had enough tormenting from Volpone and Mosca he cracks and attempts to confess at court. This leads to a rather amusing defense from Corbaccio and Corvino—“The devil has entered him!” (5.10.34). Mosca is called to court again, amusingly by Volpone himself disguised as a court officer. Voltore is convinced to rescind his confession by faking possession, and Volpone tries to tell the court that he is actually alive without revealing himself. Mosca denies this and allows the court to take him away to be whipped. Volpone weighs his options and figures since he will lose everything either way, he will take everyone down with him. The indignation raised by the play is almost entirely sated by the justice meted out in the final scene. Mosca is whipped and becomes a prisoner in the galleys. Volpone’s wealth is given to a hospital and since he gained his wealth by feigning illness, he is sentenced to, “lie in prison, cramped with irons, / Till thou be’st sick and lame indeed” (5.12.123-4). Voltore is debarred and banished, Corbaccio’s wealth is confiscated and he is sent to a monastery, and Corvino’s wealth is also confiscated and he must undergo an elaborate shaming punishment. If anything, some of the punishments outweigh the crimes—Volpone’s in particular is rather gruesome. This slight strangeness is matched by the virtuous characters’ rewards—Bonario takes his father’s estate and Celia is granted a

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separation with compensation, but can never remarry. Most audiences of Jonson’s time would have expected them to wed, but Celia can never legally remarry. This fact may slip by the audience since it is not explicitly stated, but it should not be ignored since it undermines the traditional wedding ending in comedies. In terms of an Aristotelian comedy, this ending’s clarification of mirth and indignation is worth careful analysis, since it does not fit our usual style. One could argue that mirth is clarified by the brutality of the punishments without the amelioration of a wedding, but that is not the type of catharsis comedies actually use. What is clarified about our mirth and indignation is the true societal values that the villains have undermined throughout the play—greed and deceit are heavily punished by their own machinations, since Volpone and Mosca could have gotten away on several occasions with their ill-gotten gains. The least villainous of the villains and the only one who openly repents without desire for vengeance is Voltore, and he suffers the least punishment—exile. This play shows the inversion of ideal societal values39 from what Jonson saw as “reciprocal goodwill and mutual obligation” to “a protocapitalist economic order that…emphasize[s] competition and the acquisition of material goods” (“Volpone” 1334). The consequences of these actions are exposed and the audience’s true values should be clarified to them. As Jonson well knew, if a society will not confront its true values, the values revealed by our actions, it will not change those actions. Until then, the societal members will make excuses to justify themselves. Volpone introduces two new comic techniques for a Modern Aristotle’s Comedy, beginning with disguise. Disguise, as a plot technique, involves any character putting on

39 Ideal values are the ones we claim to believe regardless of our actions’ value revelations.

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a false appearance or status, regardless of whether the other characters within the play know it is false. The most important disguise of this play is Volpone’s illness, which makes the petitioners vie for his inheritance. Disguise even includes Mosca appearing in public in aristocratic attire—though he does not hide his identity, his appearance conveys a social status to which he does not belong. A second technique we can call machinating, which is any character working “behind the scenes” to manipulate overall events, most notably done in this play by Mosca. Mosca constantly works to add scheme after scheme to Volpone’s overall plan or to help achieve that plan, such as pitting the various petitioners against one another in a bribery competition for Volpone’s affections (and inheritance). It is worth noting that ironic priorities are also used throughout this play, particularly by Corvino. Corvino is excessively jealous in regards to his wife, Celia, but quickly agrees to prostitute her to obtain Volpone’s inheritance. Thus, his true priority is revealed by his greed, whereas he should value his wife above riches.

Shakespeare’s Comedic Spectrum Naturally the predominant playwright of the Elizabethan/Jacobean theater was Shakespeare, so I will discuss three of his plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure.40 These cover the basic range of his comedic works— one “regular” comedy (TN), one fantasy comedy (AMND), and what is often called a problem play (MM). To explain these on a spectrum, the simplest classification would put the most light-hearted comedy on one end, and the darkest on the other. To utilize our 40 Hereafter respectively abbreviated AMND, TN, and MM. I will be using the Norton Shakespeare anthology for all of these plays, 1st edition. Luckily, none of these plays have overly divergent base texts (Quarto v. Folio). See textual notes from the Norton editors for specific textual variations and editorial choices (812, 1767, 2027-8, respectively).

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Modern Aristotelian foundational emotions, the light-hearted end (AMND) has the highest mirth to lowest indignation ratio, whereas the problem play has extremely high indignation to low mirth (MM). Our third play falls somewhere between the two extremes—in this case leaning more towards the mirth end of the spectrum. For the sake of brevity, I will refrain from discussing each play quite as in-depth and instead focus solely on the Aristotelian elements as an outline and comparing the different types of comedy within Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Most interestingly, this comparison will show that Measure for Measure is not a comedy by a Modern Aristotle’s standards, since it does not and is not meant to provide a catharsis of the indignation aroused by the play. Each of these three plays does arouse both of the requisite comic emotions, mirth and indignation, but the relative proportion of each changes the fundamental nature of the comic play itself. On the one hand, it is a limiting factor—a fantasy comedy can only sustain so much indignation without breaking the suspension of disbelief or failing artistically. However, on the other hand, this limitation is misleading since a great artist can make an extremely successful comedy with nearly any degree of indignation, as long as there is enough mirth to balance the play and maintain the comic mood. These three plays are about as different as a selection of comedies can be—other than the author, they have little in common in terms of plot, setting, or mood. At least, this is true at first glance. AMND is a lovers’ romp through an enchanted forest. TN is a tale of men wooing women, women wooing men, and a woman wooing a woman who is dressed as a man (both of whom would have been played by young men). MM is s twisted tale of sexual blackmail and the abuse of power. But there are some surprising similarities—even in the most lighthearted comedy, AMND, there is a surprising amount

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of turmoil—both Helena and Hermia feel betrayed by their beloveds at various points, Titania is forced to fall in love with an ass-headed boor, Hyppolyta is required by right of conquest to marry Theseus, and Theseus overrides Egeus’ wish that his daughter Hermia marry Demetrius. In the darkest comedy, MM, the various subplots are all devoted to comedic relief—a brothel is being shut down, a pimp becomes an executioner and compares the trades, and malapropisms abound as Elbow seeks justice for his disparaged wife. In these instances, these two plays mimic the general tone of the other play— though neither play truly reaches the level of relative mirth and indignation of the other play because the predominant emotion of that play undermines the secondary emotion. In other words, in MM the sheer amount of ignoble and downright villainous actions undermines the subplots' mirth. Likewise, our knowledge of Puck’s general incompetence and amusement at the confusion it causes keeps our indignation in check, since we do not fully sympathize with Hermia and Helena’s plights—we know it is a mistake that will be set aright. Moving back to our Modern Aristotelian’s comedy definition, we know that a comedy must imitate an ignoble action which causes our central emotions of mirth and indignation. Each of these plays does cause both mirth and indignation, though in differing amounts. Mirth in AMND is caused predominantly by the subplot characters, the ludicrousness of the lovers’ triangles and Puck’s mistakes—which means it covers almost the entire play. Truly serious moments in the play are few and far between and even then they are mostly undermined by our outside knowledge, particularly that the lovers are not being unfaithful to their true loves except by Puck’s magical interference. The inappropriate and incongruous behavior, one of our definitions of an ignoble action,

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includes Helena’s pursuing of Demetrius (accepted gender role inversion), the marital warfare between Titania and Oberon—particularly the ass-head incident41—and the tragedy-turned-comedy which comprises the fifth act. In TN mirth is caused largely by Viola’s disguise and the various reactions to it. She falls in love with the man she serves, who uses her to woo the woman he loves, which woman then falls in love with the servant/advocate (who is also a woman in disguise). This is further complicated by the appearance of Viola’s (who in disguise as Cesario) brother’s appearance—since Viola looks identical to her brother while disguised as a male. Though there are serious implications, the sheer ridiculousness of the action keeps even the serious moments mirthful—though there are some moving dark moments, such as when Antonio feels betrayed by “Sebastian,” who is actually Viola. The ignoble action of this play also falls under inappropriate or incongruous behavior—a woman disguising herself as a man to woo a man who uses her to woo a woman who turns around and woos the woman dressed as a man.42 The incongruity and inappropriateness of this behavior should be readily evident. Other mirthful incidents include Malvolio being tricked into acting like a lunatic to win Olivia’s love and pretty much everything involving Sir Andrew, Fabian, and Sir Toby, particularly when they first convince Sir Andrew to challenge Cesario to duel for Olivia’s love, then convince him that Cesario’s refusals are not from cowardice (which is true) but from overwhelming skill (thus pity on Sir Andrew).

41 Best comment goes to Titania’s description of ass-headed Bottom: “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful” (3.1.131). 42 I must admit, that was a fun sentence to write.

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In MM mirth is generally confined to subplots, though these scenes are quite amusing. It begins with syphilis jokes and closing suburb-based brothels, followed by an unemployed pimp working as an executioner and comparing his new profession with his old one (with a few disparaging comments from the current executioner that a bawd will lower his profession). In a darker strain of humor, the sheer ludicrousness of the duke’s interference can be amusing—he is the cause of the immediate problem, that Claudio is going to be killed instead of some lesser punishment, since he left Angelo in charge and wanted Angelo to enforce that law; the duke did not enforce it to avoid the appearance of tyranny.43 Yet he is also working behind the scenes to undermine his own plan, making himself appear the hero. Indignation is also apparent in each of these plays, though the different varieties and amounts cause some interesting and sometimes strange side-effects. AMND in many ways seems to have more cause for indignation in the modern sense of the term than TN, between Bottom’s unjustified good fortune in having Titania fall in love with him and the incongruity of her loving a simpleton with an ass’s head. Worse, Oberon’s motive was her charity towards an orphaned child that Oberon wanted for himself—the punishment in no way fits the crime (especially since it was not a crime). Inappropriate behavior abounds as the lovers chase each other through the forest, the women pursuing the men (period gender-role inversion) and both men are forced to love Helena, all of which is masterminded by Oberon but incompetently carried out by Puck the trickster. However, this indignation is kept in check by the play’s mirth and therefore does not reach the level that these events would normally inspire if the general tone of the play was more serious.

43 I will come back to appearance in discussing indignation.

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In both AMND and TN “indignation” in the modern sense of the word is misleading— modern readers tend to associate indignation with anger, which in the Modern Aristotelian sense is true if there is a large degree of indignation to a relatively small degree of mirth. However, in a smaller degree or if more balanced by mirth, indignation is not so much anger as a feeling of unease, a tension arising from unresolved conflict. The resolution of this conflict is a large part of comic catharsis. In TN the indignation is inextricably tied to the play’s mirth—several characters display “inappropriate” behavior, including Orsino asking a woman who loves him (but is disguised as a man) to woo another woman, Viola disguising herself as a man and taking on the full male gender role, and Olivia falling in love with Viola who is disguised as Cesario and then forcing “Cesario” to marry her, even though “Cesario” is actually Sebastian by then. Amusingly, Olivia also inverts gender roles by pursuing “Cesario.” The main indignation, the sense of unease from unresolved tension, arises from Viola’s love of Orsino—she loves him selflessly, and sacrifices her love to try to help him win Olivia though it is apparent that Viola is a better match for Orsino. In MM the indignation by far outweighs and overshadows all mirth within the play. Angelo experiences outrageously unjustified good fortune in being given the duke’s authority while he is “away,” which gives him the power to commit extremely inappropriate behavior—trying to force a woman to sleep with him to save her brother’s life. Bizarrely, it is her virtue that tempts him: O cunning enemy, that to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on

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To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet, With all her double vigour—art and nature— Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid Subdues me quite. (2.2.184-190) However, this is overshadowed by the duke’s actions. Duke Vicentio puts Angelo in charge and wants Angelo to enforce the death penalty for premarital sex, but refuses to begin enforcing it himself so he won’t appear a tyrant, “’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them / For what I bid them do—for we bid this be done / When evil deeds have their permissive pass, / And not the punishment” (1.3.36-39). The duke cares only about appearance, and spends the play manipulating everyone. This begins with the duke impersonating a friar—which is sacrilege, particularly when he performs the office of a friar in hearing Juliet’s confession and attending Claudio in prison. The duke shows excessive cruelty throughout the play, beginning with using the opportunity of Juliet’s confession to inform her that her lover will be executed the next day. The duke sets up the trick to make Angelo sleep with Mariana (premarital), making them both guilty of the very crime for which Claudio is set to be executed, although the duke claims it is no crime since they were once engaged, which their society sometimes considered official enough that sex was permitted. The duke does intercede to keep Claudio alive, but originally plans to have someone else executed (early) to provide Angelo with a head,44 but the fortunate demise of someone who looked like Claudio prevented this from being necessary. However, they still desecrate the corpse by chopping off his head and using it

44 Since Angelo wanted proof that Claudio was executed.

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as a prop. The duke then lies to Isabella that Claudio is dead, to no apparent purpose (4.3).45 The final scene is truly bizarre—the Duke “returns” and sets up this elaborate scene where the various petitioners can complain about Angelo’s actions. When Isabella relates what Angelo has done, the duke rejects her petition, declares her crazy, and has her arrested—for no apparent reason. The duke then forces Angelo to marry Mariana, though he begs for execution. Even after that, the duke lies repeatedly to Isabella that her brother is dead, and then sentences Angelo to death, which makes Mariana beg for his life. Even Isabella pleads for Angelo’s life, using crazy logic—that since her brother did commit the act he attempted, his execution was just, but since Angelo tried to commit the same act but failed, he should be spared. Even after everyone pleads for his life, Angelo still longs for death, “I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, / And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart / That I crave death more willingly than mercy” (5.1.468-470). When the Duke finally does reveal that Claudio is not dead in the very next line he proposes to Isabella, to which she never responds. Even after this, the Duke sentences yet another person (Lucio) to execution, only to remit it by forcing him to marry a prostitute, which Lucio claims, “is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging” (5.1.515). This supposedly happy ending is obviously forced and contrived (by the duke, that is). Isabella’s lack of response is highly suspect. If she did respond, no matter acceptance or refusal, it would undermine the whole play. If she accepts his proposal, she undermines her entire character, since she would rather her brother be executed than lose her chastity. If she

45 Or as he says, “But I will keep her ignorant to her good, / To make her heavenly comforts of despair / When it is least expected” (4.3.101-103).

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rejects the duke it undermines the traditional comic ending, which is the marriage of all or many of the central characters. The comic catharsis varies wildly within Shakespeare’s work, particularly in these three plays. One of the problems in (re)creating an Aristotelian comic theory, or any comic theory, is accounting for all of the different types of comedies. Either the theory focuses almost exclusively on the lighter comedies, such as AMND and TN or it focuses on darker comedies, typically satires and social critiques. Even our Modern Aristotle’s theory has this central problem, as Leon Golden notes when proposing nemesan (indignation) as the central comic emotion. Indignation is subtle in fantasy comedies, which makes the catharsis of this indignation difficult to describe. However, Golden does describe the basic catharsis within these types of work, “in works of farce and fantasy, such as the Menaechmi and A Midsummer Night's Dream, a gentle parody, a mild nemesan, wryly pervades texts that clarify Puck's often substantiated insight: ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be’” (Golden 289). To understand TN’s catharsis, we can paraphrase Puck, “Lord, what fools these lovers be.” These plays make light of (and shed light on) the human condition, particularly the follies we commit when falling in love. We laugh at the characters, but we also laugh a bit at ourselves. MM, however, is something different. Comic catharsis is created by the resolving of tension and the enlightenment of our minds—it generally leaves us with a peaceful clarity of mind. MM does not dissolve much of its dramatic tension, even though the ending is somewhat traditional. There are multiple marriages, but almost all of them are forced by the duke against the wishes of the groom. They would all rather die, which puts a damper on the traditional comicending festive-wedding mood. Moreover, the villain/hero—the duke—who has been the

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true cause of everyone’s misery, remains entirely unchanged, unrepentent, and unpunished. He is a manipulative bastard who engineered the pain and misery felt throughout the play and now wants to “convince” a woman who wanted to be a nun to marry him. The play ends with most of the male characters feeling miserable and wanting to die, and does not clarify how Isabella is supposed to react to this proposal. The only characters who have a clearly happy ending are Claudio and Juliet, which is not enough to resolve the tension—though it was the initial cause. MM lacks catharsis because Shakespeare refused and undermined the traditional comic ending without turning this refusal itself into a comedy technique, as several later playwrights will do.46

Comedy of Wit: The Restoration and the 18th Century The Restoration Period was in many ways a golden era for theatrical comedies, in which masterpiece after masterpiece was composed by numerous playwrights, including Aphra Behn, William Congreve, George Etherege, William Wycherly, John Dryden, John Gay and George Farquhar. Their comedies are generally described as comedies of manner, a kind of social satire often depicting an ideal individual or couple who represent the playwright's optimal values, almost always including wit. A sub-type of these comedies is what John Wilson calls intrigue comedies, which he describes in his introduction to Six Restoration Plays: [Intrigue comedy] consisted of a plot involving one or more cynical gallants who sought to seduce (or marry) a like number of brisk young ladies, and who had to overcome or circumvent a heavy father, an old

46 Notably John Gay in The Beggar’s Opera, which I will discuss in the next section.

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husband, or a set of rivals. Fortified with a variety of fools, country bumpkins, braggarts, fops, and half-wits (all of whom provided broad physical comedy by their appearance and behavior in farcical situations), and spiced with erotic bedroom scenes, pretty actresses in breeches, and passages of double entendre, a merry intrigue comedy was sure to please the taste of the Town. (xi) The ideal individual or group would be the witty cynical gallants, who are opposed to a repressive culture personified in the father figure, be it a literal father, an old husband, or contesting rivals. The ideal character is also usually contrasted to the false wit, which can be any combination of the characters Wilson describes as “ fools, country bumpkins, braggarts, fops, and half-wits.” These plays are in many ways direct descendents of Ben Jonson's plays, such as Volpone, as Wilson also comments, “Writers of realistic comedies in the tradition of Ben Jonson claimed that their purpose was to inculcate morality by displaying 'humors'—caricatures of folly and vice—upon the stage” (xi). These moral “humor” comedy47 playwrights also included Thomas Shadwell. The Restoration comedians combined this with general social satire, focusing on an entire social class instead of focusing only on individuals—though it is accomplished through individuals representative of social classes and values. In this section I will discuss six plays by six different playwrights, spanning 98 years. The first three plays were either written in or premiered on three subsequent years, from 1675-1677. The first is William Wycherly's The Country Wife, which utterly defies several traditional comic plot elements and provides an interesting and often bizarre variation of what common elements do exist within the play. The second is George 47 Not to be confused with humorous comedies.

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Etherege's The Man of Mode, which delves into the intricacies of multiple love affairs and the meaning of being a “gentleman.” The third is Aphra Behn's The Rover, which has severe elements of menace and one of the major characters has a fairly tragic ending, which is particularly important since it is the “hero”'s cast aside mistress, to whom Behn shows great sympathy. After this group the plays spread out temporally. William Congreve's The Way of the World in 1700, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in 1728 and finally Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer in 1773.48 Wycherly's The Country Wife is a truly bizarre comedy in terms of structure and general premise. It opens with Horner laying out his plot to cuckold the husbands of virtuous wives—Horner will publicly emasculate himself (symbolically) by claiming that due to an accident he has become a eunuch. He then reveals the truth to these “virtuous” wives, that he has propagated this rumor to maintain their public virtue, and since virtue in their culture is entirely about appearance, the wives are more than willing to cuckold their husbands. Wycherly holds up Horner as the ideal man, a libertine. As John Wilson points out in his introduction, Wycherly “believed that libertinism was consistent with nature and therefore good; the only sin was sexual hypocrisy” (2). The sexual hypocrites are the women Horner sleeps with: Lady Fidget, Mrs. Dainty Fidget, and Mrs. Squeamish, “three canting trollops who had so much honor in their mouths they had no room for it elsewhere” (Wilson 2, paraphrase of Horner in Wycherly 26). Horner, on the other hand, is quite open about his libertinism, but their husbands simply do not believe

48 From this point on discussions on each play will be abbreviated to major plot pieces, and even then some characters and major plot points may be disregarded—not that they do not fit the Modern Aristotelian comedy, but for the sake of brevity. For example, Harcourt and Alithea's subplot in The Country Wife is an excellent comedic plot and is crucial for the overall plot at several points, but is not integral to discussing the play as an Aristotelian comedy.

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him. This keeps Horner from also being a sexual hypocrite. Horner himself gives a decent paraphrase of the play's moral in Act I, “A pox on 'em, and all that force nature, and would be what she forbids 'em! Affectation is her greatest enemy” (Wycherly 12). Before considering the general plot structure as it relates to a Modern Aristotelian49 comedy, two more central characters must be introduced—Mr. and Mrs. Pinchwife. Shortly after Horner's comment about people going against their own nature, we are introduced to Mr. Pinchwife, who, we are informed by Horner, has married against his nature: “ . . . I did not expect marriage from a whoremaster such as you, one that knew the town so much, and women so well” (Wycherly 14). This unnatural marriage presents itself in Pinchwife's excessive and abusive jealousy (as implied by his name), which causes him severe anguish and drives him to great cruelty. In this play, the playwright's values, which differ significantly from the general society's values, become the ideal within the play's world. Thus the ignoble action is not diverging from society's values, but rather conforming to them—namely, sexual hypocrisy and going against nature. The “heroes” of the play are therefore those who live according to their nature, most notably Horner. The mirth is caused by a variety of sources: first, Horner's subterfuge, publicly emasculating himself to gain access to publicly virtuous and chaste (excepting with their husbands, presumably) but privately promiscuous women; second, from the extensive double entendres, in which Horner and the various women publicly discuss their sexual plans and previous actions but which the husbands misinterpret, initially due to Horner's scheme but eventually to save face.50

49 Hereafter abbreviated MA. 50 Most (in)famously the discussion on Horner's china, which everyone wants but he has given entirely away for the moment.

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Third, mirth arises from the hypocrisy many characters demonstrate, from the “virtuous” women's condemnation of immoral women (who are no more immoral than they, but were caught) to Mr. Pinchwife's jealousy, when he is a notorious womanizer. Indignation also arises from each of these sources—Horner is not truly an eunuch and, therefore, we can consider his access to “virtuous” women either unjustified good fortune or inappropriate/incongruous behavior, and perhaps both. Indignation is also caused by the obvious hypocrisy throughout the play, as the publicly “virtuous” women show their true morals with Horner.51 The husband’s blindness also causes indignation, since Horner is quite open and honest about his plans and actions, and uses this openness to disguise them. We cannot help but be indignant that the husbands are blind to it. The catharsis in this play is particularly odd, since “order” is not restored by our usual definition. Instead, the wives and the doctor, appropriately named Quack, “convince” the husbands that Horner is indeed an eunuch. It is obvious the husbands know the truth, but to maintain their reputation they must be willfully blind to that truth. However, one major aspect of the play's indignation is not entirely resolved—Mrs. Pinchwife is forced to return to her excessively jealous and abusive husband. It is partially resolved by Mrs. Pinchwife achieving a measure of revenge against him by cuckolding him. Throughout the play, mirth greatly outweighs indignation, which makes this partial resolution easily acceptable within this context. The audience would expect Horner's secret to come out and perhaps also to have Mrs. Pinchwife somehow marry Horner as she wishes, but the audience would not expect everyone to help Horner cover 51 As Lady Fidget comments, “Our reputation! Lord, why should you not think that we women make use of our reputation, as you men of yours, only to deceive the world with less suspicion? Our virtue is like the statemen's religion, the Quaker's word, the gamester's oath, and the great man's honor – but to cheat those that trust us” (Wycherly 78).

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up his lie. The restoration of order is the return from gradual enlightenment to somewhat intentional ignorance. Thus, the catharsis is meant to clarify our values, aligning us with Horner's libertinism and moving us away from the wives' hypocritical virtue and Pinchwife's abusive jealousy. On a side topic, the embellished speech within this play is consistently not shown by versification, since the play is not written in verse. Like most plays since the Restoration Period, The Country Wife play is written predominantly in prose. Thus, the “embellished speech” required for an MA comedy is not presented through the brilliance of a poetic line, the playwright's mastery of versification. Instead, the playwright utilizes the natural rhythm of speech to create fast-paced witty repartee—emphasis on witty. Wit itself is the highlight of Restoration and 18th century drama, presented through this carefully crafted repartee. At a glance, the different style is readily apparent when reading the play—the characters' lines are generally shorter than in plays from earlier periods with a great deal of interruptions, which forces a quicker pace in the dialogue. Etherege’s The Man of Mode52 makes an excellent contrast piece to The Country Wife. Whereas in The Country Wife the focus is on Horner’s antics to have casual sex with multiple married women, MoM shows the many sides of romantic affairs. Dorimant, our “hero,” opens the play by ending a love affair with Mrs. Loveit, with the help of his new mistress, Bellinda. Affairs for Dorimant are an art form and entertainment: . . . next to the coming to a good understanding with a new mistress, I love a quarrel with an old one. But the devil’s in’t! There has been such a calm in my affairs of late, I have not had the pleasure of making a woman so

52 Hereafter abberviated MoM.

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much as break her fan, to be sullen, or forswear herself, these three days. (Etherege 96) As if these two affairs were not enough, a couple of friends also describe a superlatively excellent woman to Dorimant, who is “enraptured” with her description—but only with the desire to make her yet another mistress. In one sense, this play has no central plot—it is composed of these three closely intertwined subplots, eventually colliding to become a single plot. In MoM one of the most common Restoration comedy motifs is shown in great detail—love affairs between a rake and a mistress. Dorimant shows every version of this commonly used—getting rid of (and tormenting) an old mistress with Mrs. Loveit, courting a new mistress with Bellinda (which is shown from inception to conclusion), and finding Harriet, the woman whom he actually loves and will force him to settle down. As usual with this third relationship, at least one of the lovers cannot stand the other when they first meet. Parallel with these romantic shenanigans are multiple anti-romances, focused on Harriet. Harriet is arranged to marry Young Bellair and must manipulate her way out of it with Young Bellair’s help. Young Bellair actually loves Emilia, who is the unbelievably virtuous character that sacrifices her own good to do her duty. Old Bellair wishes to marry her, but Young Bellair manages to marry her first (after much trickery). In all this we see a variety of ignoble actions which cause mirth and indignation, ranging from Dorimant’s treatment of Mrs. Loveit and Bellinda, Harriet’s and Young Bellair’s forced betrothal, and Emilia’s virtue that leads to nothing but martyrdom. In some of these, mirth and indignation are caused by the same action, such as Dorimant's treatment of Mrs. Loveit and Bellinda. Though his torments against Mrs. Loveit are often

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amusing, we also know they are cruel and that Dorimant should get his comeuppance. Bellinda's reflections on Dorimant's affair with Mrs. Loveit cause a great deal of indignation, since we cannot help but sympathize with her when she sees the foreshadowing of her own relationship with Dorimant. As she comments after seeing him break up with Mrs. Loveit: He's given me the proof which I desired of his love, but 'tis a proof of his ill-nature too. I wish I had not seen him use her so. I sigh to think that Dorimant may be One day as faithless and unkind to me. (114) Though she shows a measure of doubt that he will treat her so, the audience has already seen signs by this point, the end of the second act, that Dorimant is already pursuing a new woman. The catharsis in this play comes from Dorimant marrying Harriet on the pretext of needing money to repair his estate, which satisfies the vanity of Mrs. Loveit. He protects Bellinda's honor by keeping Mrs. Loveit from finding out Bellinda was also one of his mistresses, and thereby earns a measure of forgiveness. Most importantly for the overall MA comic theory, this play incorporates a few techniques we have not yet seen (or not discussed) extensively thus far, but are characteristic of Restoration Comedy. First, Dorimant is clearly a likeable anti-hero. The audience finds itself sympathizing more with Harriet's initial impression of him, only fully accepting Dorimant after he is forced to cease being a rake. Dorimant undergoes a miniature coming-of-age, moving from youthful rakishness to faithful lover, with the assumption he will eventually marry Harriet. Second, this society, as with most of the societies in Restoration Comedy, represents inverted values as the norm and often as the

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ideal—Horner and Dorimant are often held up as ideal men, contrasted to fops and fools. The ideal woman is one who can outwit our heroic wits, thereby winning his loyalty. These inverted values are not the carnival-esque values often associated with comedy, but are rather represented as the norm and/or the ideal. Both of these plays shed an interesting light on Congreve’s The Way of the World, which picks up the inverted values portrayed in the previous two plays. The norm within The Way of the World, however, is not our ideal values or our professed values, but rather our true values revealed. These values are highly mercenary, as with the desired marriage between Mirabell and Millamant, as well as imagistic—reputation is everything, shown in particular by the marriage of Fainall and Mrs. Fainall, committed to save both their reputations, though they despise each other and each loves another person. By far the single best scene to demonstrate the mercenary nature of Mirabell and Millamant’s relationship is the bargaining for marriage, a verbal contract laying out each member’s powers and rights within the relationship. It often sounds like playful banter, but the underlying seriousness of a relationship built upon these negotiations is a bit terrifying— this is far from an ideal way to begin a marriage. Then again, utter honesty about oneself and what one needs and wants from his or her spouse before the marriage would probably avoid many a divorce—and many a marriage. Since The Way of the World overlaps in general characteristics and themes with the previous plays, I will skip to additions to our MA’s laughter from the incidents and diction. As has been mentioned a few times already, one of the fundamental characters in Restoration Comedy is the Fop, an updated version of the arrogant buffoon, through a particular type of person common during the Restoration—since the ideal man was a Wit,

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then the society will naturally have quite a few men who try to be wits but fail miserably. Thus, our laughter from the incidents addition is Foppery, though a more generic version than Restoration Comedy’s Foppery—our Foppery includes any character who believes himself or herself to be one thing when it is readily apparent to the audience that said character is self-deluded. In The Way of the World Witwoud is an excellent example of this, as his name implies—“Would that he were a wit.” For laughter from the diction we also have one addition, meta humor, in this case meta-theatrical, which we saw an incidents variety of in Shakespeare’s AMND with the play-within-a-play. In Act V of The Way of the World Witwoud makes the passing comment, “What, are you all got together like players at the end of the last act?” (387), which actually is exactly what they are and exactly what they are doing. In contrast to these plays we have Aphra Behn's The Rover, which includes several more serious and sinister elements, yet is still hilarious. These serious elements are the primary sources of indignation in the play, and even at a glance it is easy to see how they could overwhelm the mirth within the play—Florinda is nearly raped twice, the second time a gang-rape (first attempt by Willmore, second attempt by Blunt and Frederick), Angellica attempts to prostitute herself but falls in love with Willmore, the rover who utterly betrays her, for which she attempts to murder him. This is heavy stuff for a comedy, but nearly all of it is given a humorous twist or a quick rescue, though there are serious moments when the audience must wonder just how far Behn will go. The first and most obvious way Behn counteracts these indignation-arousing actions is through balancing them with mirth-inducing actions, which she accomplishes beautifully from the first scene. Hellena, who is supposed to become a nun, reveals her plan to find a lover

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first, then repent before joining the monastery. Meanwhile, her brother tries to marry her off to two different men, one that his father wants her to marry and one that the brother, Pedro, wishes her to marry. She is quite explicit for her time period in her desire to find a sex partner—she is an untried female rover, who will end up testing herself (and winning) against Willmore, the professional rover. This pursuit, which amusingly keeps switching roles between pursuer and pursued, is the driving force for much of the play. The second source of amusement revolves around Angellica, beginning with her prostitution attempt that the rich men compete to afford, followed by her falling madly in love with Willmore, because he both cannot pay for her and refuses to even if he could. Almost the very moment Willmore wins Angellica's affection (and thereby becomes his mistress) Hellena finds out and immediately wins Willmore back, but forces him to become the pursuer by showing him how beautiful she is beneath her mask (since this is set during a carnival he does not see Hellena's face until the third act). This play takes Bahktin's carnivalesque quite literally.53 Interestingly, Hellena is portrayed with many of the same rover characteristics as Willmore, such as when she says “How this unconstant humour makes me love him!” (4.2.199). Usually it is the woman's refusal of the inconstant hero that draws the man to her—but in this case it is the woman falling in love with the man because of his inconstancy, instead of just the romantic tryst she originally planned. Unlike Behn's contemporaries, she shows a great deal of sympathy toward the cast-aside mistress. Angellica's life is ruined by falling in love with Willmore: In vain I have consulted all my charms,

53 Which makes sense, since this is one of the carnivals that his theory is based on—so if it is an example of the theory which is named after the example we have a metatheatrical metacriticism infinity loop.

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In vain this beauty prized, in vain believed My eyes could kindle any lasting fires; I had forgot my name, my infamy, And the reproach that honour lays on those That dare pretend a sober passion here. (4.2.400-405) Eventually this leads to the pistol scene, when Angellica is merely a moment away from killing Willmore, but Antonio takes the gun and offers to kill him on her behalf. She is won over by Antonio and decides not to kill Willmore. Antonio tries to follow her when she leaves, but is detained by Pedro. Unfortunately, the relationship between Antonio and Angellica is never resolved within the play, which leaves both characters without a conclusion. The other expected marriages occur or are arranged—Belvile marries Florinda and Willmore consents to marry Hellena. This still leaves us with a slight problem—can a fully realized comic catharsis occur if some of the situations remain unresolved? I would have to say yes—it is entirely possible. Is the comic catharsis in this play fully realized? No, and that is part of Behn's brilliance in The Rover. The lack of catharsis with Angellica conveys Behn's sympathy for her character, and leaves the audience with uneasy feelings that they must resolve on their own, driving Behn's point home with great force. Unlike Measure for Measure, her comic ending does not ring hollow. Our indignation on every other essential issue is clarified and resolved through the marriages and Pedro's acceptance of the marriages—though he does make a somewhat unnerving comment that “ . . . I forgive you all, and wish you may get my father's pardon as easily, which I fear” (5.1.538-9). Since I cannot hope to write better words to end this section than Behn wrote to end The Rover, I will close with the same

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couple, “Lead on, no other dangers they can dread, / Who venture in the storms o' th' marriage bed” (5.1.572-3). After The Way of the World there is a 28 year gap before our next major comedy, one that is almost nothing like any comedy we have previously discussed. It instead could be considered a direct precursor of absurdist theater, since it purports to be written by a beggar who both introduces and provides commentary about his two endings and is populated by England's lowlifes, all of whom are singing opera.54 This is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera,55 our earliest example of a play that is entirely meta-theatrical, though not meta-comedy. 56 BO was inspired by Gay's indignation about two rather different subjects (the combination of which is rather funny in itself). The more obvious of the two, as the editor Burgess describes, is the form of the comedy itself, opera: Although part of [Gay's] attack was directed at sentimental comedy, the chief target of the literary satire in The Beggar’s Opera was the Italian Opera, then the reigning favorite on the London stage. For audiences accustomed to the formal, stylized Italian Opera sung in a language that few theatregoers understood, Gay’s noisy and fast-moving musical play, utilizing the traditional ballads with which they had been familiar since childhood and spoken and sung entirely in English, was, indeed, a distinct and refreshing novelty. (Gay xii)

54 Though this was strange during Gay's day, it has seen become remarkably common for English beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and police informants to sing opera while performing common daily tasks (Citation needed). 55 Abbreviated BO. 56 If it was meta-comedy it would have to be about comedy itself rather than an opera. The only true metacomedy I know of off the top of my head is Neil Simon Noises Off, which I'll discuss later.

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The sentimental comedy comment in the beginning of this quote is an important comment that helps to explain the time gap between this play and The Way of the World. When Congreve's play came out, it was on the tail end of Restoration comedy's (comedy of manners) popularity. It received painfully a painfully tepid reception, considering its brilliance. The crowd's tastes had become more moralistic and sentimental, which dominated for the next two centuries and produced few memorable comedies.57 Gay's second attack was entirely political. Gay was disappointed that George II did not offer Gay a better position than Gentleman-Usher to Princess Louisa. Gay had served the court for over 13 years, and he considered this offer excessively ungrateful. “Feeling cheated and insulted, he refused the appointment and was convinced that hypocrisy and double dealing constituted the accepted code at St. James’s Palace and Whitehall. He was convinced too that the English public would share his new-found disenchantment” (Gay xiv). Thus we end up with an anti-sentimental comedy written in the form of an opera focusing on hypocrisy and double dealing. The particularly amusing aspect of opera's popularity was that Gay's was the first in which the entirety is in English—all previously performed operas were in Italian, which few of the audience understood. /Thus opera seemed particularly fitting to Gay as the quintessential form of hypocrisy and double dealing—few attending were actually there for the performance, but rather to “see and be seen.” To portray this double dealing and hypocrisy, Gay creates the ultimate hypocrite, Peachum. Peachum's first (non-singing) lines are a brilliant defense of his career, “A lawyer is an honest employment, so is mine. Like me too he acts in a double capacity, 57 There are a few important comedies produced after 1700, but not many. MA comedies went out of favor for around 200 years, with the exception of the ones I will discuss and a handful of others, such as Behn's successors and Farquhar.

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both against rogues and for 'em; for 'tis but fitting that we should protect and encourage cheats, since we live by 'em” (5). The other characters range from highwaymen and thieves to prostitutes and nice young women who get seduced by Macheath. As Peachum argues, these people are not so different from respectable society. Gay believed that “Minister and malefactor, cutpurse and courtier were blood brothers morally. The solution to the problem, then, lay in the novel device of interchanging the two worlds, Newgate and Hanoverian Court, and displaying their consanguinity” (Gay xv). The seeming inversion of morals between the play and reality manifest themselves in several ways: 1. Inversion of values—marriage is something to be avoided at all costs, unless you have your husband killed and take his money. Love is a great vice, perhaps the greatest since it is selfish and fiscally unsound. 2. Men should be true to each other and libertines toward women. Macheath ends up being true to one woman at the cost of abandoning five others. He also abandons five children (Lucy is pregnant, the others have babies. Polly is not pregnant nor does she have a baby. She convinced Macheath to actually marry her before she’d sleep with him.) 3. The thieves appear to be gentlemen but act like rogues. 4. The “respectable” characters are even greater rogues—Jailor and Peachum. 5. The thieves use noblemen’s rhetoric to justify their profession. Mrs. Peachum's comments on marriage are particularly apt: I knew [Polly] was always a proud slut; and now the wench hath play'd the fool and married, because forsooth she would do like the gentry. Can you 72

support the expence of a husband, hussy, in gaming, drinking and whoring? have you money enough to carry on the daily quarrels of man and wife about who shall squander most? There are not many husbands and wives, who can bear the charges of plaguing one another in a handsome way. If you must be married, could you introduce no-body into our family but a highwayman? Why, thou foolish jade, thou wilt be as illus'd, and as much neglected, as if thou hadst married a lord! (15-16). Mirth and indignation should be readily abundant by now, but the catharsis is less clear. Mirth obviously outweighs indignation throughout the play, with indignation aroused by the light-hearted but heavy-handed political satire. The “beggar” actually offers us two endings—his hypothetical original (tragic) ending, in which Macheath is executed, and the audience's demanded happy ending, in which Macheath receives an inexplicable reprieve and marries Polly (but abandons his other five baby-mommas). The catharsis is that Macheath is married, but the true catharsis is that Gay is showing us the foolishness of sentimental comedy and hypocrisy. It is not a call to social reform, but rather an attempt to show what an intellectual person's priorities and viewpoints should be—the utter opposite of most of the play's characters. Our final play for this section was first performed 45 years after The Beggar's Opera. This play, She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, is one of the more difficult plays to discuss as an MA comedy, since it seems to lack almost any indignation, instead being a light-hearted farce that somehow rises above simple farce. One of our two male protagonists, Young Marlow, has the “english malady,” that he can be impudent to women below his station but can hardly even talk to women of his own class. The

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indignation from this is “inappropriate or incongruous behavior”—his “english malady” is both. When he mistakes Miss Hardcastle for a tavern-worker he treats her quite impudently, but that's exactly what she wants—she can't stand the way he acts when he knows he's speaking to a woman of his social class. However, she rather likes his impudence to people of lower classes. The amusing mix-up is begun by Tony Hardcastle, who intercepts Young Marlow on his way to the Hardcastles, and after a bit of banter, decides to play a trick upon him. He lies that they cannot make it to the Hardcastles by that night, but there is an inn nearby (which is the Hardcastles' house). Indignation should also be aroused by some of the play's impossibilities, most famously when Tony takes Mrs. Hardcastle (his mother) in circles around their house, exhausting her from a horrendous trip (Since, as Tony attests, “By jingo, there's not a pond or sough within five miles of the place but they can tell the taste of” [216]) but then mistakes her own home for “Crackskull Common” in the dark (as Tony calls it). The ludicrousness of this has galled more than a few critics, but it amuses audiences to no end. This play shares many of the fundamental characteristics of the early Restoration Comedies—a general satire of social classes, a libertine (of sorts) who eventually settles for the heroine and a secret romance that requires extreme amounts of trickery so the couple can eventually be married. Yet it also shows the slow changes taking place within comic theater—the “libertine” hero is no longer a wit who outsmarts everyone until he meets his match in the heroine, he is instead a dupe who is tricked from the beginning. The secret romance varies significantly from play to play, so there is no clear way to mark if it has changed significantly. The general satire of social classes is certainly present, but this play shows in much more depth the actions a higher class person takes in

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the presence of people he perceives as a lower status than any of the plays I have previously discussed—She Stoops to Conquer delves into the inter-class interactions through portraying Young Marlow's haughtiness towards a perceived inn-keeper and tavern workers.

Arms and the Earnest: 19th Century Comedy Since there are so few 19th century comedies, there is little to be said for a general period overview. Comedy plays and novels were generally out of vogue and often repressed, as with Fielding's Tom Jones. In the latter portion of this century two great comic playwrights do produce some masterpieces, most notably Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man.58 These two plays make a striking contrast, with Shaw's war-torn setting filled initially with menace as an enemy soldier sneaks into an innocent woman's room to hide from the soldiers hunting for him. Wilde's comedy opens with hilarious discussions on escapism, whether it be Bunburying or pretending you are your own brother. Yet in each appearances are deceiving—the “war hero” Sergius is an incompetent buffoon who got extremely lucky and is cheating on his fiancee, the “coward” in hiding (Bluntschli) is actually the accomplished military officer who would have slaughtered Sergius and his men if Bluntschli had been given the correct ammunition for his weapons. In IBE the deceptional appearances are rather obvious—everyone is pretending to be Earnest to try to hook up with various women who have always dreamed of having a relationship with someone named Earnest. Wilde reduces a moral quality to nothing but the appellation, 58 Abbreviated IBE and AM respectively.

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which the women desire but the men utterly lack. Eventually it comes out that Jack Worthing is actually Algernon's older brother and that his original name was indeed Earnest. The contrast between these plays (as comedies) arises from the varying levels of indignation and mirth in each. The indignation is much heavier in AM than IBE, which makes it a generally darker and more serious comedy. This is shown immediately when we see Raina's veneration of her fiancee interrupted by a soldier who threatens her to keep her quiet—she cannot help comparing this “coward” who is afraid to die to the “heroic” Sergius. Bluntschli uses her modesty to keep her from calling to the soldiers, since she is only in her nightgown and he keeps her from getting her cloak. Bluntschi comments, “this is a better weapon than the revolver: eh?” to which Raina responds “It is not the weapon of a gentleman!” (11-12). We know Bluntschli is doing something awful, yet we sympathize with him when he retorts, “It's good enough for a man with only you to stand between him and death” (12). Bluntschli was spotted, so soldiers begin searching Raina's house. Bluntschli prepares to fight but Raina decides to help him hide, because he showed kindness by immediately giving her her cloak when it became obvious other people were coming. Once the soldiers have left the mirthful elements begin taking full effect—Bluntschli reveals his pistol was not loaded, and instead of extra ammunition he carries chocolate, which he already ate. Bluntschli then, after much prompting, tells Raina of the charge and how utterly crazy the enemy's commander was, only to find out afterward that the crazy man is her fiance. Raina and her mother end up hiding Bluntschli and letting him sleep in Raina's room, since he is too exhausted to

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leave. In act II, Sergius tells Bluntschli's story to Raina and her mother, not knowing that they are the women who helped the soldier escape. Each of these plays arouses a great deal of mirth, but while IBE may be the funnier play, AM is the better comedy. IBE reveals some human folly, but is generally meant for entertainment only. AM exposes our assumptions about people we don't know, inverting our initial expectations and subverting our attempts to fully understand any character until the very end of the play. Once Raina and her mother's deception is revealed, as well as Sergius' plans to marry Louka and Raina's actual age, Bluntschli is free to propose to Raina—who is convinced to accept him (he is rich, after all) by her family (she loves him anyway). Few plays have as delightful a cathartic experience as AM, which should be used as a paradigm for romantic comedies. The greatest comedies have large amounts of both indignation and mirth—when balanced, extremely dark subjects can be portrayed while still reaching the audience through mirth. This is a technique we see a great deal in 20th century comedy.

20th Century Comedy Renaissance Much like the Renaissance Period, this is not an actually “rebirth,” since comedy never entirely died as a genre. However, comedy did become significantly more popular again, which reopened the interest in exploring the limits of comedy—just how far a playwright can push creating a truly macabre work that still being a comedy. Playwrights also experimented with the limits of stage productions—though plays-within-plays had been created before, meta-theater has been used to extent never previously seen in works

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such as Noises Off and Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Playwrights have also experimented with minimalist productions, removing every single possible extraneous detail to see if a fully functional play can still be created. The most famous example of this is Beckett's Waiting for Godot.59 I will divide these plays into two general categories: predominantly mirthful and predominantly indignant. The more mirthful plays are the ones we generally think of as light-hearted comedies, as opposed to serious comedies. In general, the “serious” comedies have more lasting literary appeal since they tend to address social issues or vivisect the soul. I will begin with a trio of light-hearted comedies: Michael Frayn's Noises Off, Noël Coward's Private Lives and Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace. Noises Off is the single best meta-theatrical comedy I have ever seen or read. Basic gist of the play is that in Act I we have a group of people rehearsing a single act from the play Nothing On, in which we see the interaction of various willful actors interacting with their director. We get glimpses into the drama that will evolve in the next two acts. In Act II, we see the opposite side of the stage—we are now behind the stage as characters leave the actual stage to “go onstage” and perform the scene they were practicing in Act I. Personal problems quickly begin interrupting the performance, but with a great deal of effort the cast manages to pull the performance off successfully. The humor in this section is almost entirely physical, since we are overhearing the performance of the other play the entire time, while watching the backstage problems

59 Due to the sheer amount of comedies within this section I will have to make no more than passing allusions to many plays, Waiting for Godot being one of them. Suffice it to say that theater of the absurd generally does not meet the criteria for a Modern Aristotelian comedy, since there is almost never a catharsis—absurdity has to come down to a level of reason for catharsis to occur, since there needs to be an intellectual clarification.

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play out mostly silently. In Act III we are again back around front, but this performance is an utter disaster, as every interpersonal conflict comes to a head simultaneously. Rather than discuss how this play is an MA comedy I will focus on the various comedic elements we have not seen as extensively so far and have not yet discussed. First, under laughter from the incidents we have slapstick—the physical humor in this play is unavoidable in a discussion of comedy. Slapstick humor was certainly present in earlier comedies, but without stage directions it is not as obvious when and how it is present—by the 20th century playwrights began including extensive stage directions, taking on a directorial role in their plays. Several points in this play utilize straight slapstick, such as when Lloyd sits on a cactus twice in the second act or the plate of sardines disappearing, reappearing, and generally causing mayhem throughout the entire play. Almost all of Act II is devoted to slapstick comedy once Nothing On begins. The second incidental form of humor that we see is parallel plot structure—each act is in some way a repeat of the initial act, since many of the lines and actions are repeated, but it is the variations and deviations that cause humor—though we never actually see a clean performance of Nothing On, since even in the first act it is broken up by various problems with the actors. This itself is a foreshadowing to the performance breakdowns. We then don't see (but do hear) their most successful performance in Act II, since we are watching backstage where the entire play is constantly threatening to disintegrate. As for laughter from the diction, this is the only play which necessarily incorporates “improvisation,” though it is not actually improvisation—adapting lines or creating new lines to keep the play on track (prompting another actor, etc.), adding humor, or dealing with unexpected circumstances. It is worth noting that this play's catharsis is an intellectual clarification

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about theater itself—the audience gets the tiniest glimpse into theater's possibilities, wondering just what goes on behind the scenes, what private dramas they may be getting glimpses off when they see a performance. Private Lives is about as different from Noises Off as two plays can be and still be considered part of the same general genre. Where Noises Off has a superabundance of characters (don't forget Nothing On's separate characters), Private Lives has only five. Private Lives does have some extremely painful moments, but on the whole the mirth overwhelms the play's indignation. It also helps that the play is one of those vivisections of the soul I mentioned, though more like a vivisection of abusive romantic relationships. It's hard to describe it in a way that doesn't make it sound horrifying. In the play it isn't. This is a play that essentially asks “What are people like in their private lives when put into extreme and extraordinary circumstances?” The amusing and terrible answer is that the innocent and inexperienced pair who think Sibyl and Amanda act outrageously end the play by acting just like them. Or, if applied to the general public, as Amanda comments in Act I: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives. It all depends on a combination of circumstances. If all the various cosmic thingummys fuse at the same moment, and the right spark is struck, there's no telling what one mightn't do. (9) There is an an interesting conflict between belief and action. Elyot and Amanda believe they love their mutual spouses but abandon them twice. Sibyl and Victor believe they could never be like Elyot and Amanda but start fighting each other, sounding pretty much identical. This play demonstrates the cyclical nature of relationships. Elyot and Amanda's

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relationship is manic-depressive(aggressive)—either very good or very bad, with no middle ground. They go through years of marriage in minutes. At one point they discuss the loss of these extremes—a kind of limbo after the excess is spent. This is the state most marriages are in the vast majority of the time. It is worth noting that the initial marital conflicts are caused by the new spouses wanting to know about the exes. This play analyzes love as an emotion and as a relationship. The difference between love as emotion and love as relationship is crucial, since it is what breaks these new marriages and brings Amanda and Elyot back together. This play also uses several brilliant parallel relationships and scenes to highlight the similarities and differences between the characters. This also shows up in repeated words and phrases, such as when Elyot says he loves Sibyl “more wisely” than he loved Amanda, and shortly thereafter Amanda says she loves Victor “much more calmly” than she loved Elyot (3, 7). For contrast, immediately after Elyot and Amanda run into each other, Elyot tries to convince Sibyl to leave the hotel immediately, with an added test of faith in him, Listen, darling. I want you to be very sweet, and patient, and understanding, and not be upset, or ask any questions, or anything. I have an absolute conviction that our whole future happiness depends upon our leaving here instantly. (Coward 11) Naturally, he's right and she refuses. He does everything he can to get her to leave without telling her that Amanda is in the hotel. Eventually he gets so mad at her “sheer wanton stubbornness” and says he wants to cut her head off with a meat ax (12). Amanda tries the opposite tactic—she reluctantly tells the truth, but Victor is too reasonable and says that it shouldn't matter, and he will take care of Elyot if he bothers Amanda. Victor

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and Sibyl both have traditional (misogynistic) views of masculinity, which causes conflicts in both of their marriages. By the end of Act II Amanda and Elyot's abuse restarts while Sibyl and Victor watch, utterly stunned. It doesn't take long in Act III to see that Elyot and Amanda are rubbing off on Victor rand Sibyl—Victor is willing to talk instead of fight and questions masculinity, while Sibyl has learned to insult nearly as well as Amanda. Eventually Victor and Sibyl turn against each other while Elyot and Amanda laugh about it and elope again. The catharsis in this play is about love—it makes us fools, and it can make us do anything, no matter how calm and reserved we think we are. The final of our three light-hearted plays has the most potential for being dark, yet still remains almost entirely light-hearted—even though it is about murder, a veritable houseful of corpses (well, cellarful anyway). Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace actually contains a serial killer competition—Abby and Martha have mercy killed twelve men, but only if they have no family, are miserable, and hold the “proper” religious convictions. Mortimer is the normal member of the family, a dramatic critic. He has a crazy brother who is also a serial killer, who tries to take up residence with Martha and Abby and continue his killing spree. He accidentally discovers that he is tied for kills with Martha and Abby and tries to quickly find another person to kill. Being rather competitive, he immediately looks for another victim. He doesn't manage to pull it off, instead getting arrested. Mortimer manages to get Martha and Abby to be sent to a psychiatric facility, but before they go they feel the urge to one-up Jonathan, and when the head of the facility visits him, they learn he is a perfect candidate for their special wine and serve him as the curtain falls.

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Various special characteristics of this play include a running joke specific to the original performance and cast. Jonathan has a plastic surgeon who travels with him, and his surgeon loves Boris Karloff, so in the last surgery he altered Jonathan to look identical to Karloff, which causes Jonathan no end of trouble. In the original performance, which is in the front of the script, Boris Karloff himself played the role. It also contains beautiful examples of ironic priorities, such as this one: Mortimer: Aunt Abby, how can I believe you? There are twelve men in the cellar and you admit you poisoned them. Abby: Yes, I did. But you don't think I'd stoop to telling you a fib. To general society, murder is obviously worse than fibbing. But from their perspective, lying is morally reprehensible whereas mercy killing is not. They murder men who are lonely and miserable, but only if they believe they are sending him to heaven. Like The Importance of Being Earnest, this play is extremely funny, but it contains so little indignation that I have little to discuss that makes it unique apart from the unique plot. The catharsis has far less impact without the indignation. Our final five plays have little in common except for increased indignation, which creates a different cathartic response than a play with low amounts of indignation. In some plays it nears a tragic catharsis, since the protagonists raise both pity and fear within the audience, but each of these playwrights deftly avoids the tragic or subsumes it, transforming it into a comic catharsis. This is most notable in Neil Simon's Lost In Yonkers and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the first and last plays I will discuss in this section. In between we have three rather strange a disparate comedies— Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor, a meta-comedy, but not in the theatrical sense

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per se; Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, which led to the popular term “comedy of menace,” which Pinter happened to hate; and finally Martin McDonaugh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, by far the most macabre comedy I've ever read. Simon's Lost In Yonkers is perhaps the most prestigious among this collection, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. It is rather dark, revolving around the central question “What happens to children in the absence of love?” This is explored through two paralleled generations of a family. Here are my quick notes on each character: Jay – parallel to Louie, older of the two children (15 ½). Tries to join the mob to take care of his brother and father Arty – parallel to Eddie, younger brother (13 ½). Cries a good bit, making him a parallel to his father as a child. Eddie – “broken” man, who put his family in debt to give his wife the best possible last months of her life. His need to be a traveling salesman to repay the loan creates the dramatic situation. Bella – has “loose marbles,” later described as a permanent child, a description she rebels against. She has a hard time connecting her thoughts sometimes, but her desperate need to be loved starts healing her family. Grandma Kurnitz – a bitter and desperate old woman unable to open up to her family. Her abusive coldness and hostility have horribly damaged her children.

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Louie – the semi-gangster who learned to survive at any cost, and makes other people pay the cost. He redeems himself by escaping the mob and joining the army. Gert – has an odd speech impediment caused by extreme fear, but it usually only shows up when Grandma Kurnitz is around. Simon uses these parallel generations to show how close Jay and Artie come to repeating their father and uncle's mistakes. Grandma Kurnitz emotional coldness is shown physically when Arty describes kissing her, “It felt like putting your lips on a wrinkled ice cube” (4). This line also demonstrates the play's careful balance of mirth with indignation. In this play indignation is aroused by “inappropriate” behavior, but not in the sense we've seen previously. Instead it is the inappropriate behavior between family members, and the damage done by this behavior which manifests in a variety of ways among the Grandma Kurnitz's children, from Gert's speech impediment, Bella's “loose marbles,” Louie's selfish viciousness, and finally Eddie being a “broken” man—though he alone managed to escape some of the damage when he married, and only has to return after his wife's death. The first act is terribly painful—Eddie is forced to ask his mother for help, to look after his boys so he can be a traveling salesman to pay back a loan shark. He had to take the loan to make his wife's last months as comfortable as possible. Unsurprisingly, Grandma Kurnitz refuses, thinking that she is doing what her child and grandchildren need—to be hard like steel (36). But Bella shocks everyone: Bella: No, Momma. They're not going. They're staying. Because if you make them go, I'll go too . . . I know I've said that a thousand times but 85

this time I mean it . . . I could go to the Home. The Home would take me . . . You're always telling me that . . . and if I go, you'll be all alone . . . And you're afraid to be alone, Momma . . . Nobody else knows that but me . . . But you don't have to be Momma. Because we'll all be together now . . . You and me and Jay and Arty . . . Won't that be fun, Momma? (39)60 This is the first indication that Bella is the only person who can see through Grandma Kurnitz's steel shell, who knows not only how to stand up to her, but how to reach her through it. When Louie shows up it becomes quickly apparent that he has also learned to stand up to Grandma Kurnitz and was the favored son, who became like steel to survive. This was perhaps the most damaging of all, and made him become a low-level gangster. As Grandma responds when Arty asks if it would make her happy if he died, she responds, “It's not so important dat you have me, Artur . . . It's only important dat you live” (71). But by the end of the first scene in Act II she denies this, “Live—at any cost I taught you, yes. But not when someone else has to pay the price” (90). It's Bella who begins to break the steel and show its weaknesses, when she tries to tell Grandma about the man she wants to marry and the children she wants to have: My babies will be happier than we were because I'll teach them to be happy . . . Not to grow up and run away or never visit when they're older or not be able to breathe because they're so frightened . . . and never, ever to make them spend their lives rubbing my back and my legs because you never had anyone around who loved you enough to want to touch you because you made it so clear you never wanted to be touched with love . . . 60 All ellipses are in the original text. Simon uses ellipses to denote pacing, probably only a beat, maybe two at most. They are not unique to Bella—pretty much everyone has them, but Bella's are more frequent.

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Do you know what it's like to touch steel, Momma? It's hard and it's cold and I want to be warm and soft with my children . . . (102). Grandma finally admits that she shut down after two of her children died. If she stayed cold and distant, she couldn't be hurt any more. But Bella forces her way, forces her to accept change, and in this change begins healing for the whole family—which we see in Gert's speech improvement, Louie joining the army to stop being a gangster, and Eddie's return after healing in a hospital (from overworking himself). The catharsis in this play is a healing—steel is not enough to survive. What they had wasn't really survival except in the barest sense. As Grandma says, “Everything hurts. Whatever it is you get good in life, you also lose something.” That is the essence of this play's catharsis—but you have to be willing to lose something, perhaps everything. Otherwise you can never have anything good. Our second Neil Simon comedy is Laughter on the 23rd Floor, which would be a tragedy if it wasn’t so funny. It’s about the breakdown of a television show and society itself, reflected by the new cheap tastes, anti-intellectualism, and McCarthyism. It revolves around Max Prince, a tragic hero who hosts a television comedy (Dick Van Dyck-esque, or Saturday Night Live) and has a complete breakdown. The major characters are his staff, who are working to write his jokes and deal with his and their personal problems. Our narrator is Lucas, the newest writer who begins on a trial period, succeeds, but is only on the show for a year before it is canceled. In one sense, this play has a great deal in common with Lost In Yonkers—it is about a family trying to cope with overwhelming problems. The family in Laughter is one created within the workplace, where everyone has the ability to communicate whatever they want (as long as they can

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be funny), but no one is guaranteed to listen. This play is a kind of bildungsroman in play form for an entire group of people, but especially for Lucas. Brian is the caustic comedian who seems like a joke in Act I when he talks about going to Hollywood, but in Act II he does go and is quite successful. However, Lucas' epilogue makes it clear that he dies too young. Carol, the good writer who doesn't want to be seen as a woman writer has her first child over the course of the play and goes on to have several more (that is our only comment upon her in the epilogue). Helen works as a secretary for Max to get close to the writers, because she wants to be a comedy writer also. However, it becomes quickly apparent she has no talent for it, and she goes to law school. The brightest note in the ending is that on the day of their last show McCarthy was censured for conduct unbecoming a Senator, which signaled the end of McCarthyism. Max Price becomes a kind of martyr in the war against McCarthyism and the mindset of the American people who made McCarthyism possible, and this shows his war with NBC was not entirely in vain. Laughter's catharsis provides possible clarity in several areas to the audience: real life has plenty of drama, struggles against oppression and ignorance that match any fictional story; it is never in vain to stand up for what you believe in if you believe you are doing the right thing, but the cost can be enormous; tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin, and laughter can turn a tragedy into a comedy. A tough audience always turns a comedy into a tragedy, at least for the performers. Our third play is this section is quite possibly the hardest to classify as a comedy. It is Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, the play that gave rise to the term “comedy of menace.” There is a vaguely threatening air throughout the play, shown first in Stanley’s reclusiveness and fear, then in Goldberg and McCann’s subtle threats and innuendos, then

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in the semi-violence, and finally in Stanley’s breakdown and Goldberg’s innuendo that his body will be carted away in his large car’s trunk. I have a hard time seeing much humor in this play; it may come across better in staging than in the script. Much of the script humor is the absurdity of the innuendos and the mysterious meaning behind the long passages of seeming nonsense. It is also in the air of menace, the odd bits of comic relief that periodically break the tension. As is common in 20th century plays there is a small cast—six people total. These small casts magnify each character's importance and generally precludes them from being stock characters, such as Restoration Comedy's fop. There are some hilarious points in the play, such as Meg's ignorance of the word “succulent,” and assumption that it is inappropriate to say it to a married woman. Stanley then repeats it to describe anything, such as Meg as a “succulent old washing hag” (18). As I mentioned, a lot of the play's humor is derived from mysterious, half-decipherable innuendo, such as when Goldberg describes the job they are on to McCann: The main issue is a singular issue and quite distinct from your previous work. Certain elements, however, might well approximate in points of procedure to some of your other activities. All is dependent on the attitude of our subject. At all events, McCann, I can assure you that the assignment will be carried out and the mission accomplished with no excessive aggravation to you or myself. (30) But the real question is if this play arouses indignation. An air of menace turned comic can work, but it is not an MA comedy without indignation. It's not a simple question to answer for this play—there is no clear way to judge early on what would constitute

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“inappropriate or incongruous behavior,” and there doesn't seem to be any undeserved good fortune. Yet the sense of unrealized (or slowly realized) menace functions in much the same way, arising from inappropriate/incongruous behavior—people acting in ways that seem almost normal, but not quite. Speech that sounds reasonable and uninteresting in just the words takes on new meaning. Our need to know what is going on and why is the indignation, the need to have the mystery resolved, or at least to see it's culmination. The threat of violence escalates throughout the play, particularly beginning with the verbal power struggle over who is going to sit or stand. It then degenerates into evocative seeming-nonsense that often is nonsense but sometimes, in the briefest phrase, is enlightening: Goldberg: What did you wear last week, Webber? Where do you keep your suits? McCann: Why did you leave the organization? Goldberg: What would your old mum say, Webber? McCann: Why did you betray us? (48) We have no way to tell what parts are nonsense and what might be references to Stanley's past. McCann: You betrayed our land. Goldberg: You betray our breed. McCann: Who are you, Webber? Goldberg: What makes you think you exist? McCann: You're dead.

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Goldberg: You're dead. You can't live, you can't think, you can't love. You're dead. You're a plague gone bad. There's no juice in you. You're nothing but an odour! (52) They drive Stanley completely mad with their threats and terrifying nonsense, so that during the birthday party games he starts giggling like a madman and then becomes catatonic. Petey tries to stop McCann and Goldberg from taking Stanley away, but can't stand up to their vague threats. His wife remains semi-intentionally oblivious. This leads to the final difficult question—does the indignation in this play in conjunction with what mirth there is lead to a catharsis. At best, this play is borderline— the catharsis is neither simple nor clear. If I had space and time, I would have discussed The Merchant of Venice as an early “comedy of menace.” I would have an easier time discussing a catharsis of that play, but it would also be difficult for many of the same reasons—it has significant menace that undermines the comedy. In The Birthday Party the catharsis is in part the absurdity of the mysterious menace, that drives a man completely crazy (in a kind of funny way). The clarification is how humorous the menace can be (unlike Merchant of Venice). In terms of comedic theory, I would have to wonder if the menace ceased to be unrealized and was instead quite intense, downright brutal and gory. Well, McDonagh accomplishes this beautifully (and disturbingly). I must admit, I rather like this utterly disturbing play, even though it includes almost all of my least favorite things—slaughtering and mistreating animals, torturing people, and a slew of murders. Padraic is a member of an Irish extremist group who thinks the IRA are too conservative, and who only loves one thing in the entire world— his cat, Wee Thomas. Davey, the underwhelming older brother of Mairead (a young Irish

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extremist) has the misfortune to find Wee Thomas dead on the road, and gets blamed by Padraic's father Donny for killing him. Eventually it is revealed that other members of the INLA (Christy, Brendan, and Joey) killed Wee Thomas to lure Padraic back to his home to kill him. Indignation is aroused by Wee Thomas' killing, Padraic's “inappropriate behavior” (torture, trying to find someone to murder in retribution for Wee Thomas), the cat killers' cat killing, Donny and Davey painting Sir Roger with shoe polish and various other shenanigans throughout the play. Christy wants to kill Padraic for accidentally shooting his eye out (parallel Mairead's using cow's eyes for target practice with her air rifle). Mairead shoots out the eyes of the three attackers to save Padraic, but when she finds out Padraic killed her cat, she kills him. She forces her brother and Padraic's father to chop up and dispose of the bodies. Hilariously, just after Padraic’s murder the real Wee Thomas returns. The cat killed was some other cat, while Wee Thomas was “off gallivanting,” as he seems to have a propensity to do. Donny and Davey try to kill him as retribution for “causing” all the deaths, but neither are able to do it and decide to spare him. The intellectual clarification in this play is a reordering of our priorities—even though many of the characters are members of an extremist group, only when Padraic is torturing a drug dealer do we see any of them acting to uphold that group's beliefs or trying to better society. The rest is brought on by selfishness and revenge. Mairead, the most extreme non-group affiliated (yet) person is no better—she murders Padraic to get vengeance for Sir Roger. Each person who deserves death gets it (excepting Mairead)— the violence is cyclical and self-destructive.

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Our final play is Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.61 It could be considered the epitome of modern comedy—a stark contrast to the comedy of earlier periods. It shows, somewhat like Private Lives, a dark night of the soul for two marriages. But WAVW ? is much bleaker than Coward's comedy, even though there is almost no physical abuse in WAVW?. It portrays two couples, a older, experienced couple comprised of George, a history professor, and Martha, daughter to the university's president. The younger couple is comprised of Nick, a new professor at the university and Honey, a woman he married because she seemed to be pregnant. Martha, as the daughter of the university's president, invites the new couple over to her and George's house as a “get to know you” after-party when the regular welcoming party had concluded. Thus our play begins already in the middle of the night, with George and Martha a bit tipsy and rapidly progressing towards drunk. George and Martha begin “games” once they arrive, but these games are not exactly your standard party fare—they're verbal games of power and wit, with a vindictive twist. Act I is titled “Fun and Games,” for a nice twist of irony. The drama begins when Martha tells George they have people coming over, and he asks when. She shouts “NOW!”(9). George doesn't want anything to do with them, but Martha says they are coming over, “Because Daddy said we should be nice to them” (11). It becomes quickly apparent that there is a great deal of contempt in their marriage. Sometimes their speech takes off in two different directions at once: Martha: I swear . . . if you existed I'd divorce you. . . . George: Well, just stay on your feet, that's all. . . . These people are your guests, you kow, and . . .

61 Abbreviated WAVW?

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Martha: I can't even see you . . . I haven't been able to see you for years . . . George: . . . if you pass out, or throw up, or something . . . Martha: . . . I mean, you're a blank, a cipher . . . (18).62 This struggle to communicate, to reach through all the barriers that build up between individuals is one of the major themes in this play. Early in the play, Honey begins showing signs of discomfort: Nick: (To Honey) Are you all right? Honey: Of course, dear. I want to . . . put some powder on my nose. George: Martha, won't you show her where we keep the . . . euphemism? (30) George cuts through the civility and speaks the simple truth. The politeness is a lie. From the beginning of the play it seems like Nick and Honey's relationship is inestimably superior to George and Martha's, but over the course of the first act problems become more obvious between Nick and Honey. The play also contains an element of horror, particularly in the moment when George walks up behind Martha with a shotgun, aims it at her head, and fires. Nick and Honey are terrified, but it's a gag shotgun. The warfare then really heats up once Martha mentions their son. Each one begins telling stories back and forth about their son, making the other person out to be a villain, child abuser/molester, etc. In the second act more truths begin coming apparent. Nick reveals that he only married Honey because she seemed to be pregnant, but it was a hysterical pregnancy. It helps she had money. Martha escalates the warfare even further when she tells Nick and Honey about George's book, 62

All ellipses are in the original text. Like Coward, Albee uses ellipses to denote pacing.

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that Martha's father would not let him publish. Eventually George delivers the coup de grâce when he kills their child and reveals that their boy was imaginary. He was the game they never ended—created from their unfulfillable desire for a child and governed by only one rule: never reveal this game to outsiders. Martha broke it, and so George had to finish the game. George broke down the barriers between himself and Martha. It draws them closer together, gives them an exhausted peace from their games that look more like war. This play is the closest I've seen to an Aristotelian tragicomedy. It arouses all four emotions: pity, fear, mirth, and indignation. The ending provides a catharsis for all four, revealing the truth about their relationship and clarifying the motives behind their (and our) emotional warfare, particularly as a response to insatiable grief. It even takes place in the course of a single night, with a single setting and unified action, meeting Neoclassical conception of Aristotle's unities.63

63 I say the Neoclassical conception because Aristotle only insisted on unity of action, which he never defined particularly clearly. He does discuss (sort of) the unity of time and setting, but they are not strict requirements.

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Chapter 3: In Conclusion All's Well That Ends Well As I have said on more than one occasion and referred to obliquely many more times, a Modern Aristotle's theory of Comedy is: Comedy is the imitation of an ignoble action that causes mirth and indignation, is complete, and lacks magnitude; by means of embellished speech, enacted by persons and not presented through narrative; accomplishing by means of mirth and indignation the catharsis of such emotions.

As we've seen throughout the history of comedic plays, these characteristics can take a variety of forms, including fantasy plays, tragicomedies, “comedies of menace,” and more. But all of these fit under a Modern Aristotle's theory as long as the emotions aroused, which must include mirth and indignation, undergo an intellectual clarification (catharsis). This intellectual clarification itself varies dramatically, depending on the playwright's subject and general purpose with the play. Like the Tractacus Coislinianus I have updated the laughter from the incidents and diction. These are by no means a complete list, but have been compiled in hindsight while writing this thesis using the plays discussed. I. “Laughter from the Incidents” updated 1. Parody – creating a version of something that reflects the original just enough to be recognizable but is used to a significantly different end. The “lamb of god” in The Second Shepherds’ Play as a literal lamb in a cradle.

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2. Ironic priorities – Magnifying the insignificant, diminishing the important. Love v. money in The Way of the World, murder v. fibbing in Arsenic and Old Lace. 3. Disguise – Volpone as a mountebank, Mosca presenting himself as an aristocrat in Volpone. 4. Machinating – working “behind the scenes” to manipulate events—Mosca again, in Volpone. 5. Self-mockery of the character or the playwright of his own work (AMND’s play-within-a-play and Bottom) 6. Inverting roles – any traditional expectation inverted, such as a woman recklessly pursuing a man in AMND or gender inversion in TN. 7. Ineptitude – Much of AMND revolves around Puck’s mistakes, and the play-within-a-play is supposed to be a tragedy, but becomes a comedy through the actors’ idiocy. 8. Anti-hero protagonist, particularly as they need to transform for the catharsis—Dorimant in The Man of Mode. 9. Foppery – Almost all of Restoration comedy has the Fop, but this includes any character who believes himself or herself to be one thing when it is readily apparent to the audience that said character is self-deluded. 10. Slapstick – Noises Off, the term can be applied to any purely physical humor but generally conveys humorous violence.

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11. Parallel scenes – Noises Off , the internal play Noises On repeats in each act, but with subtle (and some not-so-subtle) variations. II. “Laughter from the Diction” 1. Parody – substituting an expected word or phrase for another—this can be direct and intentional or accidental, as in malapropisms. 2. Impossible knowledge – the ridiculous amounts of anachronisms in The Second Shepherds’ Play are a good example of this. 3. Reductio ad absurdum in TN 1.5.214ff—breaking down beauty into constituent parts so that it becomes meaningless. 4. Meta-jokes—The Way of the World, “What, are you all got together like players at the end of the last act? (Congreve 387 [Act V]). 5. Allegorical or symbolic names – Volpone, Mosca in Volpone, pretty much every Restoration Comedy play. Peachum for the informer in The Beggar's Opera is another good one. 6. Improvisation—adapting lines or creating new lines to keep the play on track (prompting another actor, etc.), adding humor, or dealing with unexpected circumstances. Noises Off contains the appearance of many, pointing out how often actors must adapt to circumstances. Since I can think of no better way to end this thesis than with a quote, I would like to end it with a quote. Since I can think of no appropriate quote, I shall make one up, and quote myself:

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The brilliance of comedy lies not in escaping the world nor social reform, but in confronting the world as it is and finding something worth laughing at—because in laughter is love and forgiveness and hope, not for a better tomorrow, but a brighter here and now. -Aaronistotle

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Kessselring, Joseph. Arsenic and Old Lace. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1969. Print. Leon, Golden. "Aristotle on the Pleasure of Comedy." Essays on Aristotle's Poetics. Ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. 379-385. Print. Nelson, Michael J.. "Inoperable Humor: The 5 Worst Comedies of All Time." Cracked.com - America's Only Humor & Video Site Since 1958. N.p., 6 Mar. 2007. Web. 26 Jan. 2012. "mirth, n.". OED Online. December 2011. Oxford University Press. Web. 6 February 2012. Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party & The Room. New York: Grove Press, 1965. Print. Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Print. ---. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Greenblatt, Cohen, Howard, Maus, Gurr 814-861. ---. Measure for Measure. Greenblatt, Cohen, Howard, Maus, Gurr 2029-2086. ---. Twelfth Night. Greenblatt, Cohen, Howard, Maus, Gurr 1768-1821. Shaw, George Bernard. Arms and the Man. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959. Print. Simon, Neil. Lost in Yonkers. New York: Plume, 1993. Print. The Second Shepherds’ Play. Medieval and Tudor Drama. Ed. John Gassner. New York: Applause, 1987. 102-127. Print.

Vaughan, M. F. "Mak And The Proportions Of The Second Sheperd's Play." Papers On Language & Literature 18.4 (1982): 355. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. William, Wycherly. The Country Wife. John Harold Wilson 5-86 Wilson, John Harold, ed. Six Restoration plays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959. Print. Woods, Nigel ed. She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies. Oxford UP, 2008. Print.