eeling that inspires it: the one gradually passes into the
other, so that we may allow our sympathy or our aversion to glide along
the line running from feeling to action and become increasingly
interested. About gesture, however, there is something explosive, which
awakes our sensibility when on the point of being lulled to sleep and,
by thus rousing us up, prevents our taking matters seriously. Thus, as
soon as our attention is fixed on gesture and not on action, we are in
the realm of comedy. Did we merely take his actions into account,
Tartuffe would belong to drama: it is only when we take his gestures
into consideration that we find him comic. You may remember how he
comes on to the stage with the words: "Laurent, lock up my hair-shirt
and my scourge." He knows Dorine is listening to him, but doubtless he
would say the same if she were not there. He enters so thoroughly into
the role of a hypocrite that he plays it almost sincerely. In this way,
and this way only, can he become comic. Were it not for this material
sincerity, were it not for the language and attitudes that his
long-standing experience as a hypocrite has transformed into natural
gestures, Tartuffe would be simply odious, because we should only think
of what is meant and willed in his conduct. And so we see why action is
essential in drama, but only accessory in comedy. In a comedy, we feel
any other situation might equally well have been chosen for the purpose
of introducing the character; he would still have been the same man
though the situation were different. But we do not get this impression
in a drama. Here characters and situations are welded together, or
rather, events form part and parcel with the persons, so that were the
drama to tell us a different story, even though the actors kept the
same names, we should in reality be dealing with other persons.

To sum up, whether a character is good or bad is of little moment:
granted he is unsociable, he is capable of becoming comic. We now see
that the seriousness of the case is of no importance either: whether
serious or trifling, it is still capable of making us laugh, provided
that care be taken not to arouse our emotions. Unsociability in the
performer and insensibility in the spectator--such, in a word, are the
two essential conditions. There is a third, implicit in the other two,
which so far it has been the aim of our analysis to bring out.

This third condition is automatism. We have poin