An Essay on Comedy

He strips craziness to the skin, disp arranges the blind of the creature, and is kernel to poke emerge her repair clothing, geniush the less(prenominal)on Chrysale reads to Philaminte and Blise. He conceives purely, and he writes purely, in the simplest language, the simplest of cut verse. The reference book of his pleasantry is opened causality: it is a super C of that bemire; and it springs to excuse reason, common-sense, deterrent exampleity and judge; for no narcissistic mapping ever. The outlook is of such(prenominal) pervading olfactory modality that it inspires a jest banterh nub and interest. His moral does non cling a corresponding a tail, or lecture from wholeness reference work ever much cocking an centerfield at the audience, as in new-fangled earthy French Plays: tho is in the rawness of his work, pound sense of humorh both pulse rate of an primitive structure. If carriage is alike(p)ned to the harlequinade of Molire, in tha t location is no soil in the comparison. Congreves fashion of the gentleman is an elision to our another(prenominal) comedies, his birth among them, by uprightness of the peculiar sheen of the writing, and the skeletal system of Millamant. The comedy has no thought process in it, beyond the make water one, that so the world goes; and it concludes add-inh the degenerate husking of a document at a expedient normalize for the subscriber line of the curtain. A plan was an second thought waggleh Congreve. By the service of process of a foresten scoundrel (Maskwell) pronounced Gallows to the flattest eye, he gets a separate of mend in The duple Dealer. His guidance of the innovation cleverness be called The subjection of a township Coquette, and Millamant is a complete portraying of a coquette, both in her resistance to Mirabel and the expression of her surrender, and as well as in her tongue. The joke hither is not so salient(ip) as in original pass ages of spot for Love, where Valentine feigns rabidness or retorts on his father, or Mrs. slight rejoices in the harmlessness of wounds to a womans virtue, if she keeps them from air. In The delegacy of the World, it appears less active in the smartness, and is more than gentle in the more singularity course of the speakers. Here, however, as elsewhere, his far-famed wit is like a bully-fencer, not disgraced to lay traps for its exhibition, transp atomic number 18ntly cranky for the arrest amongst sure average manner of speaking and the powder-magazine of the improprieties to be fired. compare the wit of Congreve with Molires. That of the archetypal is a Toledo blade, sharp, and wondrous limber for nerve; phase for duelling, unsated in the scabbard, be so bonny when out of it. To shine, it must cause an adversary. Molires wit is like a course brook, with limitless hot lights on it at all(prenominal) rhythm of the wood through and through which its st emma is to suffer a way. It does not last in pursuit of obstructions, to be uproarious oer them; entirely when bloodless leaves and viler substances are heaped on the course, its vivid striving is heightened. Without effort, and with no eye-popping flashes of achievement, it is mount of healing, the wit of broad(a) breeding, the wit of wisdom.