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
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ii

TO THE OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES:

The members of the Committee approve the thesis of

Aaron Nicholas Penn presented on April 17
th
, 2012.


___________________________________
Charles Bane, Committee Chairperson


___________________________________
Jay Ruud


___________________________________
Dwayne Coleman





iii

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 professors 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 13
th
, 2012


iv

ABSTRACT

I like to describe this thesis as a scholarship-based thought experiment
constructing Aristotles comedic theory using post-Aristotelian plays and quasi-
Aristotelian 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.


v

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 DramaBen Jonsons Volpone...........................37
Shakespeares Comedic Spectrum.................................................................49
Comedy of Wit: The Restoration and the 18
th
Century................................58
Arms and the Earnest: 19
th
Century Comedy................................................75
20
th
Century Comedy Renaissance................................................................77
Chapter 3: In Conclusion
Alls Well That Ends Well.............................................................................96
Works Cited.................................................................................................100


1

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 Aristotles 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 Jankos 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

2

experiment constructing Aristotles 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 Poeticswhether it is a students notes from Aristotles lectures, Aristotles
speaking notes, something Aristotle wrote for his students to study, or something else
entirely. Reading the Poetics is certainly an odd experiencesome 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

3

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 Heaths 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 Aristotles 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 comedyunless 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 playwrights 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.

4

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 Coislinianus
2
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 existthat it is a basic outline of Poetics II (Jankos
theory), that it is a students notes (possibly heavily corrupted), or that it is a student or
scholars attempt to reconstruct Poetics II (this thesis disreputable grandfather, if you
will
3
). 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
Aristotles dramatic theory is fundamentally descriptive, which is why an
Aristotelian-esque theory can be created using any significant body of plays and
Aristotles surviving works as a guidelineboth in using the Poetics Is comments on
comedy and contrasting it to Aristotles tragic theory. It is worth noting (again) that this
thesis is not an attempt to remake Jankos reconstruction of Poetics II, since it is based on

2

Which will hereafter be abbreviated TC.
3

OK, Ill admit I added the disreputable part just because I thought it was a funny description, although
Malcomn Heath would probably agree with itthough hed probably consider the grandson
disreputable as well.


5

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 Aristotles 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
utilitarianany 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 qualifiedfor example, I would
argue that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is better than Hamletas 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 Aristotles theory is primarily descriptive, his philosophy is
similarhe describes what worked for Ancient Greeces 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 Aristotles 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 doesnt make sense and seems to be a reference to the main characters 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.


6

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
playa 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 Aristotles theory, which Ill 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.


7

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. Aristotles next comment on actors portraying the action instead of
narration is pretty straightforwardinstead 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 Aristotles 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 times
7
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 Im not exaggerating. Its a three paragraph section that I can almost quote verbatim.


8

describes tragedys and comedys 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. Aristotles description of tragedy's
and comedys 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 difficultthe ugliness in tragedy is not a part of the characters character, but a

9

momentary lapse of judgment. In the case of comedy, Aristotle seems to say here that
there is an actual problem within the persons 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 characters 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 heros inferiority is a range of points between the two extremes.
Shortly after this section is Aristotles 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

10

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 black-
and-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. (27-
8)

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

11

similarities all day, but it just proves Aristotles pointthere 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 Harts You Cant Take
It With You, or it can be horrifying and hilarious at the same time, as in Martin
McDonaghs The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Comedies can be fantasies like Shakespeares
A Midsummer Nights Dream or strange tales of menace like Harold Pinters The Birthday
Party or even Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice (often performed as if the title was
The Tragedy of Shylock). Comedies lend themselves to meta-theater, such as the play-
within-a-play in A Midsummer Nights 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 Aristotles time were
usually original and the comedic playwright was only limited by his audiences
suspension of disbelief.

12

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 Jankos expansion of the TCs 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 Aristotles tragic definition; second, Janko has used the
surviving section of the Poetics I to make the two even more similar.
9
JTCs 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

Id suggest reading Jankos translation twicefirst without Jankos 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 Jankos 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 Jankos TC (abbreviated JTC) as opposed to just the TC, since they are not the same.


13

meaning that ramifications beyond the plays 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 plays 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 23
rd
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.

14

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 Sandlers 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 Centrals 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 comedys 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 Bergsons and Freuds comic
theories (284). For Bergson, the audiences laughter punishes the actors 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 youve seen it, youll understand why. If you havent and want to skip a few thousand
years of purgatory, you can mentally flagellate yourself by watching this movie.


15

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
Bergsons theory neglectscomedies 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 Nights 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 Segals 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, Goldens method in reconstructing Aristotelian comic theory
is to look at later critics and works and extrapolate the similarities to Ancient Greek

16

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 Goldens 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 Goldens 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 Goldens
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 Goldens 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, Menanders 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), 51-
60; 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

17

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 JTCs comedy
descriptionthat the comic catharsis is a purging of the comic emotions, which he
defines as laughter and pleasure. If Goldens argument about catharsis is correct (or
accepted), this provides significant evidence against the TCs 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.


18

Once all of Goldens 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 Aristotles theory, there are still several problems. First, there is no
clarification in the Poetics about what magnitude refers to,
15
and JTCs 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.


19

creates a contrast to Aristotles 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 tobut 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. Goldens 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 Goldens 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

Aristotles 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),


20

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 JTCs definition, a combination of Jankos 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 Goldens 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 Goldens 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 coherencya
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

21

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 self-
containedthe 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 Goldens version. For the modern variation, it is worth repeating that
this is Goldens 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 indignationthe 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).


22

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 Jankos 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
authors 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

Jankos 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? JTCs synonymy.


23

within the same sentence for the same meaning, thus creating a repeated meaning without
repeating the same word. JTCs 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 dont make sense without Jankos 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.

24

(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
Aristotles in the Poetics. Some of these, however, do have potential for pointing at
comedy tropesparticularly 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 JTCs 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
itselfhowever, 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 helpfulI think it makes the description more confusing.


25

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

26

shallow, (c) as nonessential and (e) as irrelevant and nonessential, we are left with (d)
alone. However, (d) does explain comic language fairly wellthe 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 playwrights 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 evocativethough 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. JTCs 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.

27

(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 analogiesthe 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 pinpointparticularly 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 divisionsexcess laughter, grand inclinations, or some point in
between. I will substitute indignation for grand inclinations
22
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.


28

comedy will have some degree of mirth and indignation, but the relative amounts of each
are directly related to the type of comedy producedfor 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 TCs theory is from Aristotle is far from clear.
Many of the TCs 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 (Goldens 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.

29

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 ludicrousthey 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 Beggars 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 didnt use the term suspension of disbelief, but his comments are surprisingly
similar: comic poets construct their plots on the basis of general probabilitiesin 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).


30

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

31

Chapter 2: In Practice
Early English Comedy: The Second Shepherds Play
26

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 Shepherds Play
27
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. Vaughans general overview of SSPs 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 boundthe 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 Gassners 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 Maks plot takes up the largest portion
of the play and is by far the most memorable.


32

of complaints are finished, Mak the thief
29
enters and pretends not to know the shepherds.
Amusingly, Mak is not bound in the same way as any of the shepherds, per sethough
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 shepherds 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 hes 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 sheepit does not
have broad-reaching social implications. Embellished speech is pretty obvious in
Gassners 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.


33

swink and sweat.
30
There is no shortage of mirth in this section, particularly in the
second shepherds 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
behaviorwe 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 Maks 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 Gills house. This section has a
great deal of farce, which contrasts dramaticallyjarringly, 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 Gills 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.


34

loyal, to God I pray / That this be the first meal I shall eat this day (522-3), which is a
parody of the Eucharistliterally 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 cant 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 sentencetossing 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 Gills 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 Gills deceit, the audiences sense of justice is appeased and the act
of mercy helps to clarify the audiences 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.


35

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 Isaiahs prophecies (ln. 675-85). This story highlights the parodies of the
previous sectionsthe 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 (JTCs 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.

36

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 uncommonpurposeful anachronism. There are many references
throughout the play to the Virgin, Our Lady, the Holy Child, Christs Holy Name, and
innumerable others. Since these comments precede the nativity story, it is both
foreshadowingtying the two main divisions of the plot togetherand purposefully
jarring. There are simply too many references, of too many different types, to be
accidental or coincidentalit 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 characters 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 Popes The Rape of the Lock.


37

Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama Ben Jonsons 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 Elizabeths 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 cruxa wealthy man apparently near death without a clear

34

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


38

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.
Volpones subtitle, the Old Fox, hints immediately that there is an animal fable
element in the play. Volpones name literally translates as fox, and several other
characters are also significant. The names of the three main petitioners for Volpones
inheritance each translates to a different variety of carrion birdrespectively a vulture, a
raven, and a crow (Voltore Corbaccio, Corvino). Volpones trickery makes his name fairly
self-explanatory, since foxes are generally trickster figures. Moscas name translates as
fly, and he is described in the character list as Volpones parasite, which the Norton
editors elide as servant. Mosca is not a parasite per say, but utilizes his position and
unique talents to further Volpones 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 throughoutwe 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 shockingthe villains win and the

39

morally upright are condemned. However, Northrop Fryes 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 Moscas 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 Moscas 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 Volpones 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 proper
36
opens with Volpone and Mosca preparing their scam, but also
shows us the inverted values within the play. Volpones 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,
fatbeasts / 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 Volpones name, and the prologue.

40

not only agricultural products, but also men, shows the brutality in what we usually
consider a virtuous, hard-working persons 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) societymoney 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

41

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 Volpones favor, but also adds competitive
gifting. Corbaccio is easily duped and makes his gift larger than Voltores. However,
Mosca then shows his tendency to overreach himselfhe adds to Volpones plan a
brilliant touch, that Corbaccio must disinherit his son and name Volpone as his heir. The
ironic inversion is rather amusingCorbaccio 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 villains 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 Corvinos 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 Corvinos exit Mosca makes a
passing remark about Corvinos wifes beauty to Volpone, and the subsequent
conversation makes Volpone enraptured by Moscas 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 actionnot 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 actthere is no shortage of
amusement in seeing a villain out-villained, as well as the various amusing incidents such

42

as Corvino shouting insults at the deaf Volpone. Indignation is aroused along two
different lines: first in Volpone and Moscas 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 Volpones feast, without informing her of his and Moscas deal. Corvinos
behavior arouses indignation by being wildly inappropriatefirst 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 acts first half, but the sheer absurdity
and audacity of Moscas apparently successful scheme lightens the second halfs 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
Moscas various machinations, particularly along two lines. The first involves Bonario,
whom Mosca has brought to Volpones to turn against his father for disinheriting him.

43

The second involves Celia again as she arrives at Volpones, who then tries to seduce her
and when that is unsuccessful eventually tries to rape her. This is where Moscas plan
falls apartsince Bonario has hidden in Volpones house, he witnesses these events and
saves Celia. Corbaccio still makes Volpone his heir shortly after this, and Voltore
discovers this factbut 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
Celias personal danger increasesbut 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 youBut 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 Volpones 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,

44

As I feed others, but possessed and crowned. (3.7.141-44, 186-89)
It actually isnt a bad offerher husband is obviously a horrible person, and Volpone is
being both kind and generous.
37
Celia, however, is fundamentally and perhaps two-
dimensionally virtuousshe first attempts to appeal to Volpones 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 isthe 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 defensedeny 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
Bonarios disinheritance as proof that Corvino distrusted Bonario and disapproved of his
adultery with Celia. One of the advocates comments that Bonarios 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 dont 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.


45

is his vice, / That can beguile so under shade of virtue (4.5.60-62). Voltore then proceeds
to claim Bonario was in Volpones 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
Corbaccios corroboration, and even Lady Would-Bes help, Bonario and Celia have no
chance of getting justice, and are even condemned themselves. This is the climax for
indignationthe 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 societys values.
The fifth acts opening makes an interesting parallel to the third actinstead 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 neer 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 repentantthough this does not stop him from
continuing his tricks within his own home. He does seem to regret, even if just slightly,

46

having to condemn Bonario and Celia to save himself. This is crucial to inspiring his
confession and reduces the audiences indignation against him.
The second scene resumes Mosca and Volpones 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 seet.
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 aboundusually 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 petitionersCorvino 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 laws consequences if Voltores part in these actions is revealed. In scene
six Mosca reveals his plan to cozen Volpone now that he is declared dead, which is

47

followed by two scenes of Volpone in disguise tormenting the petitioners. Scene eight
contains a plot piece that is rather odd to a modern audienceMosca 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 crimedressing 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
CorvinoThe 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. Volpones
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 best sick and lame indeed
(5.12.123-4). Voltore is debarred and banished, Corbaccios wealth is confiscated and he
is sent to a monastery, and Corvinos wealth is also confiscated and he must undergo an
elaborate shaming punishment. If anything, some of the punishments outweigh the
crimesVolpones in particular is rather gruesome. This slight strangeness is matched by
the virtuous characters rewardsBonario takes his fathers estate and Celia is granted a

48

separation with compensation, but can never remarry. Most audiences of Jonsons 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 endings 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 playgreed 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
punishmentexile. This play shows the inversion of ideal societal values
39
from what
Jonson saw as reciprocal goodwill and mutual obligation to a protocapitalist economic
order thatemphasize[s] competition and the acquisition of material goods (Volpone
1334). The consequences of these actions are exposed and the audiences 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 Aristotles 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.


49

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 Volpones illness, which
makes the petitioners vie for his inheritance. Disguise even includes Mosca appearing in
public in aristocratic attirethough 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 Volpones overall plan or to help achieve that plan, such as pitting the various
petitioners against one another in a bribery competition for Volpones 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 Volpones inheritance. Thus, his true priority is
revealed by his greed, whereas he should value his wife above riches.

Shakespeares Comedic Spectrum
Naturally the predominant playwright of the Elizabethan/Jacobean theater was
Shakespeare, so I will discuss three of his plays: A Midsummer Nights 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, 1
st
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).


50

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
extremesin 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 Shakespeares oeuvre. Most interestingly, this comparison will show that
Measure for Measure is not a comedy by a Modern Aristotles 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 factora 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 beother
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
similaritieseven in the most lighthearted comedy, AMND, there is a surprising amount

51

of turmoilboth 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 reliefa 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 Pucks general incompetence
and amusement at the confusion it causes keeps our indignation in check, since we do not
fully sympathize with Hermia and Helenas plightswe know it is a mistake that will be
set aright.
Moving back to our Modern Aristotelians 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 Pucks mistakeswhich 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 Pucks magical interference.
The inappropriate and incongruous behavior, one of our definitions of an ignoble action,

52

includes Helenas pursuing of Demetrius (accepted gender role inversion), the marital
warfare between Titania and Oberonparticularly the ass-head incident
41
and the
tragedy-turned-comedy which comprises the fifth act.
In TN mirth is caused largely by Violas 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 Violas (who in disguise as
Cesario) brothers appearancesince 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 mirthfulthough 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 behaviora 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 Olivias 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 Olivias love, then convince him that Cesarios
refusals are not from cowardice (which is true) but from overwhelming skill (thus pity on
Sir Andrew).

41

Best comment goes to Titanias 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.

53

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 dukes
interference can be amusinghe 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 Bottoms unjustified good fortune in having Titania fall in love with him and the
incongruity of her loving a simpleton with an asss head. Worse, Oberons motive was her
charity towards an orphaned child that Oberon wanted for himselfthe 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 plays 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.


54

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 plays mirthseveral 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 Violas
love of Orsinoshe 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 dukes
authority while he is away, which gives him the power to commit extremely
inappropriate behaviortrying to force a woman to sleep with him to save her brothers
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

55

To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigourart and nature
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. (2.2.184-190)
However, this is overshadowed by the dukes 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 wont appear a tyrant, Twould be my tyranny to strike
and gall them / For what I bid them dofor 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 friarwhich is sacrilege, particularly when he performs the office of a
friar in hearing Juliets confession and attending Claudio in prison. The duke shows
excessive cruelty throughout the play, beginning with using the opportunity of Juliets
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.

56

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 bizarrethe Duke returns and sets up this elaborate
scene where the various petitioners can complain about Angelos actions. When Isabella
relates what Angelo has done, the duke rejects her petition, declares her crazy, and has
her arrestedfor 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 Angelos life, using crazy logicthat 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). Isabellas 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).


57

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 Shakespeares 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 Aristotles
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 TNs 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
mindsit 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 comic-
ending festive-wedding mood. Moreover, the villain/herothe dukewho has been the

58

true cause of everyones 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 tensionthough 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 18
th
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 Beggars Opera, which I will discuss in the next section.


59

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 viceupon the stage (xi). These moral
humor comedy
47
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 individualsthough 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.

60

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 wivesHorner 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 disregardednot 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.


61

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
Aristotelian
49
comedy, two more central characters must be introducedMr. 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 themnamely, 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.

62

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 sourcesHorner 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 husbands 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 resolvedMrs.
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).


63

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 reparteeemphasis on witty. Wit
itself is the highlight of Restoration and 18
th
century drama, presented through this
carefully crafted repartee. At a glance, the different style is readily apparent when reading
the playthe 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.
Ethereges The Man of Mode
52
makes an excellent contrast piece to The Country
Wife. Whereas in The Country Wife the focus is on Horners 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 devils int! 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.


64

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 descriptionbut only with
the desire to make her yet another mistress. In one sense, this play has no central plotit
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
detaillove affairs between a rake and a mistress. Dorimant shows every version of this
commonly usedgetting 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 Bellairs 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 Dorimants treatment of Mrs. Loveit and Bellinda, Harriets and Young
Bellairs forced betrothal, and Emilias 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

65

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

66

idealHorner 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 Congreves 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 imagisticreputation 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 Millamants
relationship is the bargaining for marriage, a verbal contract laying out each members
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 divorceand 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 MAs 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 Restorationsince the ideal man was a Wit,

67

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 Comedys Fopperyour 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 impliesWould 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 Shakespeares 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 playFlorinda 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

68

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 partnershe 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 herbut 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 onso if it is an example
of the theory which is named after the example we have a metatheatrical metacriticism infinity loop.

69

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 arrangedBelvile marries
Florinda and Willmore consents to marry Hellena. This still leaves us with a slight
problemcan a fully realized comic catharsis occur if some of the situations remain
unresolved? I would have to say yesit 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 marriagesthough 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 Beggars 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, Gays 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 meta-
comedy 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. Jamess 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 Englishall 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
dealingfew 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 valuesmarriage 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 shed sleep with him.)
3. The thieves appear to be gentlemen but act like rogues.
4. The respectable characters are even greater roguesJailor and Peachum.
5. The thieves use noblemens 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

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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 ill-
us'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
endingshis 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 bethe
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 behaviorhis english malady
is both. When he mistakes Miss Hardcastle for a tavern-worker he treats her quite
impudently, but that's exactly what she wantsshe 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
Comediesa 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 theaterthe 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

75

the presence of people he perceives as a lower status than any of the plays I have
previously discussedShe 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: 19
th
Century Comedy
Since there are so few 19
th
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
deceivingthe 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 obviouseveryone 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 quietshe 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 effectBluntschli 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 Rainawho 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 mirthwhen balanced, extremely dark
subjects can be portrayed while still reaching the audience through mirth. This is a
technique we see a great deal in 20
th
century comedy.


20
th
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 comedyjust how far a
playwright can push creating a truly macabre work that still being a comedy. Playwrights
also experimented with the limits of stage productionsthough 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 23
rd
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, Nol 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 stagewe 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
catharsisabsurdity 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 slapstickthe 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
presentby the 20
th
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 structureeach 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 humorthough 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 improvisationadapting 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 itselfthe 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 extremesa 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 tacticshe 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 SibylVictor 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 loveit 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-heartedeven though it is about murder, a veritable
houseful of corpses (well, cellarful anyway). Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace actually
contains a serial killer competitionAbby 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 23
rd
Floor, a meta-comedy, but not in the theatrical sense

84

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 ). Tries to join the
mob to take care of his brother and father
Arty parallel to Eddie, younger brother (13 ). 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 manthough
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 painfulEddie 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
needto 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

86

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)
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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, Liveat 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 Bellapretty much everyone has them, but Bella's are more
frequent.

87

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 familywhich 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 healingsteel 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 catharsisbut 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 23
rd
Floor, which would be a
tragedy if it wasnt so funny. Its 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 Yonkersit 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 Stanleys
reclusiveness and fear, then in Goldberg and McCanns subtle threats and innuendos, then

89

in the semi-violence, and finally in Stanleys breakdown and Goldbergs innuendo that
his body will be carted away in his large cars 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 20
th
century plays there is a
small castsix 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 playthere is no clear way to judge early on what would constitute

90

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 behaviorpeople 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 questiondoes 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
reasonsit 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 thingsslaughtering 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 Padraics 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 prioritieseven
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 bettershe 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 comedya 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 farethey'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.

95

that Martha's father would not let him publish. Eventually George delivers the coup de
grce when he kills their child and reveals that their boy was imaginary. He was the game
they never endedcreated 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.

96

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.

97

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
eventsMosca again, in Volpone.
5. Self-mockery of the character or the playwright of his own work
(AMNDs 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 Pucks 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
catharsisDorimant 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 anotherthis
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 1.5.214ffbreaking down beauty
into constituent parts so that it becomes meaningless.
4. Meta-jokesThe 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. Improvisationadapting 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
atbecause in laughter is love and forgiveness and hope, not for a better
tomorrow, but a brighter here and now.
-Aaronistotle



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