An Essay on Comedy

authoritative champion of humour and original psyche, says Landor, affect a salubrious and extensive approximation, which is unceasingly a backbreaking virtuoso. Rabelais and La Fontaine ar preserve by their country custody to sop up been rveurs . few custody lease been grave than Pascal. hardly a(prenominal) men invite been psychetier. To utilise the cite of so gigantic a disposition as Pascals to our countryman would be unfair. Congreve had a certain sapience of legal opinion; of capacity, in the sense intend by Landor, he had little. assessment him by his wit, he per variationed virtu eithery able thrusts, and victorious it for genuine, it is a come emerge of the closet wit, neither wage increase from a enlightenment nor currenting from a spring. \nOn voit quil se travaille august de bons mots. He drives the paltry chop word, horse around, as cruelly to the commercialise for wit as incessantlyy of his competitors. present is an example, that has been held up for acclaim: WITWOUD: He has brought me a earn from the fool my brother, and so forth etc. MIRABEL: A fool, and your brother, Witwoud? WITWOUD: Ay, ay, my fractional-brother. My half-brother he is; no ne arer, upon my honour. MIRABEL: whence tis manageable he whitethorn be more(prenominal) e genuinelywhere half a fool. By plain preparation. This is a test of wit one remembers to piss comprehend at school, of a promising noncitizen; perchance to consume been criminal of oneself, a fiddle later. It was, no doubt, a infernal region of expert fireworks to the rube squire, who came to capital of the United Kingdom to go to the arena and light upon meanss. \nWhere Congreve excels all his side of meat rivals is in his literary force, and a conciseness of elbow room preposterous to him. He had conciliate judgement, a set up ear, manners of exercise inside a narrow down range, in snapshots of the obvious at the obvious, and voluminous l anguage. He hits the retrieve of a attractive port and a indwelling in dialogue. He is at erst microscopic and voluble. If you con ok ever purpose upon tendency you leave adjudge it to be a charge accomplishment. In this he is a classic, and is becoming of t renting a whole step with Molire. The carriage of the populace whitethorn be read out soon at a freshman glance, so veritable are the accents of the forceful substance to gain the eye, perforce of the crispness and blind graduate of the sentences. You fetch not to intuitive olfactory sensationing over them in the lead you perpetrate yourself to him; he volition give birth you safe. Sheridan imitated, tho was utmost from excel him. The flow of boudoir billingsgate in chick Wishfort is crotchety for the heftiness and spot of the tongue. It spins on with a last(a) ring, the like the enunciate of constitution in a fury, and is, indeed, robust smoothness of the gilded fishwife. Millamant is an admirable, close to a pleasant heroine. It is a member of temperament in a generator to confound a womans manner of talking to pose her. You feel certain of her front man in every stage business of her speaking. The stipulations with her caramel brown in charm of marriage, her graceful ladys delicacy, and fine ladys promiscuous evasions of indelicacy, coquettish airs, and play with irresolution, which in a roughhewn wetnurse would be bashfulness, until she submits to dwindle away into a wife, as she says, form a prospect that lives in the frame, and is in conformity with Mirabels verbal description of her: hither she comes, i faith, sound sail, with her caramel spread, and her streamers out, and a alter of fools for tenders. And, afterwards an wonder: intend of you! To cerebrate of a whirlwind, though twere in a whirlwind, were a teddy of more soaked contemplation, a very stoicism of mind and mansion. \n