rfering
with other systems. A continual change of aspect, the irreversibility
of the order of phenomena, the perfect individuality of a perfectly
self-contained series: such, then, are the outward
characteristics--whether real or apparent is of little moment--which
distinguish the living from the merely mechanical. Let us take the
counterpart of each of these: we shall obtain three processes which
might be called REPETITION, INVERSION, and RECIPROCAL INTERFERENCE OF
SERIES. Now, it is easy to see that these are also the methods of light
comedy, and that no others are possible.

As a matter of fact, we could discover them, as ingredients of varying
importance, in the composition of all the scenes we have just been
considering, and, a fortiori, in the children's games, the mechanism of
which they reproduce. The requisite analysis would, however, delay us
too long, and it is more profitable to study them in their purity by
taking fresh examples. Nothing could be easier, for it is in their pure
state that they are found both in classic comedy and in contemporary
plays.

1. REPETITION.-Our present problem no longer deals, like the preceding
one, with a word or a sentence repeated by an individual, but rather
with a situation, that is, a combination of circumstances, which recurs
several times in its original form and thus contrasts with the changing
stream of life. Everyday experience supplies us with this type of the
comic, though only in a rudimentary state. Thus, you meet a friend in
the street whom you have not seen for an age; there is nothing comic in
the situation. If, however, you meet, him again the same day, and then
a third and a fourth time, you may laugh at the "coincidence." Now,
picture to yourself a series of imaginary events which affords a
tolerably fair illusion of life, and within this ever-moving series
imagine one and the same scene reproduced either by the same characters
or by different ones: again you will have a coincidence, though a far
more extraordinary one.

Such are the repetitions produced on the stage. They are the more
laughable in proportion as the scene repeated is more complex and more
naturally introduced--two conditions which seem mutually exclusive, and
which the play-writer must be clever enough to reconcile.

Contemporary light comedy employs this method in every shape and form.
One of the best-known examples consists in bringing a group of
characters, act after act, into the mo