ltogether to life. On the one hand, characters in real life
would never make us laugh were we not capable of watching their
vagaries in the same way as we look down at a play from our seat in a
box; they are only comic in our eyes because they perform a kind of
comedy before us. But, on the other hand, the pleasure caused by
laughter, even on the stage, is not an unadulterated enjoyment; it is
not a pleasure that is exclusively esthetic or altogether
disinterested. It always implies a secret or unconscious intent, if not
of each one of us, at all events of society as a whole. In laughter we
always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to
correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed. This
is the reason a comedy is far more like real life than a drama is. The
more sublime the drama, the more profound the analysis to which the
poet has had to subject the raw materials of daily life in order to
obtain the tragic element in its unadulterated form. On the contrary,
it is only in its lower aspects, in light comedy and farce, that comedy
is in striking contrast to reality: the higher it rises, the more it
approximates to life; in fact, there are scenes in real life so closely
bordering on high-class comedy that the stage might adopt them without
changing a single word.

Hence it follows that the elements of comic character on the stage and
in actual life will be the same. What are these elements? We shall find
no difficulty in deducing them. It has often been said that it is the
TRIFLING faults of our fellow-men that make us laugh.

Evidently there is a considerable amount of truth in this opinion;
still, it cannot be regarded as altogether correct. First, as regards
faults, it is no easy matter to draw the line between the trifling and
the serious; maybe it is not because a fault is trifling that it makes
us laugh, but rather because it makes us laugh that we regard it as
trifling, for there is nothing disarms us like laughter. But we may go
even farther, and maintain that there are faults at which we laugh,
even though fully aware that they are serious,--Harpagon's avarice, for
instance. And then, we may as well confess--though somewhat
reluctantly--that we laugh not only at the faults of our fellow-men,
but also, at times, at their good qualities. We laugh at Alceste. The
objection may be urged that it is not the earnestness of Alceste that
is ludicrous, but rather the special aspect w