Our speaking on the theme of Comedy will
appear almost a libertine proceeding to one, while the other will think
that the speaking of it seriously brings us into violent contrast with
the subject.
Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the
Muses. She was in her origin, short of slaughter, the loudest expression
of the little civilization of men. The light of Athene over the head of
Achilles illuminates the birth of Greek Tragedy. But Comedy rolled in
shouting under the divine protection of the Son of the Wine-jar, as
Dionysus is made to proclaim himself by Aristophanes. Our second Charles
was the patron, of like benignity, of our Comedy of Manners, which began
similarly as a combative performance, under a licence to deride and
outrage the Puritan, and was here and there Bacchanalian beyond the
Aristophanic example: worse, inasmuch as a cynical licentiousness is more
abominable than frank filth. An eminent Frenchman judges from the quality
of some of the stuff dredged up for the laughter of men and women who sat
through an Athenian Comic play, that they could have had small delicacy
in other affairs when they had so little in their choice of
entertainment.
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