The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader

Ian Wilkie, Ian Wilkie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429614378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader is a selection of the most outstanding critical analysis featured in the journal Comedy Studies in the decade since its inception in 2010.

The Reader illustrates the multiple perspectives that are available when analysing comedy. Wilkie's selections present an array of critical approaches from interdisciplinary scholars, all of whom evaluate comedy from different angles and adopt a range of writing styles to explore the phenomenon. Divided into eight unique parts, the Reader offers both breadth and depth with its wide range of interdisciplinary articles and international perspectives.

Of interest to students, scholars, and lovers of comedy alike, The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader offers a contemporary sample of general analyses of comedy as a mode, form, and genre.

Part I

Back to basics

What is comedy and where does it come from?

Chapter 1

Against Comedy (1:2)

Chris Ritchie

Then will the comedians turn and twist, rendered nimbler than ever by the sting of fire that is not quenched.

(Tertullian¹)

1.

Comedy, laughter and joking have long been a concern for philosophers, moralists and belligerent clerics. The philosophy of comedy starts with Plato and Aristotle laying out their respective positions: Plato saw laughter as a mix of pain and pleasure and jokes as containing a levelling quality that could reduce the status of the powerful; Aristotle described comedy as an educative force for social good. It is between these two polarities that the debates over the function of comedy have been strung: those who see a subversive negative quality in comedy and those who see a positive subversive quality.

2.

Comedy and joking have been historically proscribed as social status, and hierarchies can be undermined by a simple joke passed along from mouth to mouth like a virus, mocking the great and the good. In The Republic Plato writes that ‘we must not allow any poet to represent men of repute as overcome by laughter, much less to represent gods in such a case’ (Plato 1958: 69). Plato saw how comedy and laughter could undermine the rulers of his Republic. Comedy is a mix ‘of pain and pleasure’ (Plato 1956: 57). It is undignified to show people who lack self-awareness, and the pleasure of comedy arises from the discomfort of others.

Aristotle believed that although comedy is ‘an imitation of inferior people […] The laughable is an error or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction’ (Aristotle 1965: 9). Comic characters transgress etiquettes, and although somehow ‘less’ than us are still like us, which is why we relate to them, and comedy, like slapstick, is not real. Of course, some people do find the involuntary suffering of others amusing, and finding something funny is always a subjective experience. How do we justify what we laugh at – if at all?

3.

Epictetus the Stoic (d. 135AD) warned against loss of control and excess in all things: ‘Let not your laughter be much, nor on many occasions, nor excessive’ (Epictetus 1991 32), and at the theatre, ‘abstain entirely from shouts and laughter at any (thing or person)’ (Epictetus 1991 33). The role of social joker fares less well: ‘Take care also not to provoke laughter; for this is a slippery way towards vulgar habits and is also adapted to diminish the respect of your neighbours’ (Epictetus 1991 34). But perhaps laughter should be cultivated as a stoical coping mechanism for the continuous stress and absurdity of everyday life.

In De Spectaculis, the early theologist Tertullian (155–230 AD) listed the reasons for not attending comic displays or theatres, and threatened eternal damnation for the comedian: the theatre was the site of idolatry and all manner of badness, as it involved male actors dressing up as women (due to the fact that, in various times, it was illegal for women to perform onstage). Tertullian cites Deuteronomy’s edict that a man shall not ‘put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD our God’ (Deuteronomy ch. 22, v.5). So much for the Christmas panto then.² Men dressing as women is a transgression. In transvestite comedy the intentions vary: men dissembling convincingly as women (Dame Edna, Lily Savage) is not the same as men obviously dressed as women for comic ones (Les Dawson). For Tertullian, the theatre in general is wrong, and if they insist on this kind of behaviour then it is going to end in tears:

If tragedies and comedies are the bloody and wanton, the impious and licentious inventors of crimes and lusts, it is not good even that there should be any calling to remembrance the atrocious or the vile.

(Tertullian, De Spectaculis xxvii)³

It was only in fifteenth-century Britain that the church embraced theatre’s educative power: realizing that the populace would always be drawn to spectacle, the church used performance as a method of propaganda with morality and miracle plays.

Occasionally, comedy could receive a good press: Evanthius (d.359AD) agreed with Aristotle’s idea of the beneficial nature of comedy: ‘Comedy is a story treating various habits and customs of public and private affairs, from which one may learn what is of use in life, on the one hand, and what must be avoided on the other’ (Palmer 1982: 30). Livius Andronicus also held that ‘Comedy is the mirror of everyday life’ (Palmer 1982: 30). Donatus (c.fourthcentury BC) admired the Roman playwright Terence, as his characters were true to life and observed decorum by avoiding offensive topics.

4.

In his Penitential, Thomas de Chabham⁴ worried that the guise of the minstrel was useful for ne’er-do-wells, idlers and spies to adopt. Dating from the start of the thirteenth century, the Penitential categorized the different classes of performers and players: ‘the church unanimously condemned minstrels because of their association with the tricks learned from the Roman slave “histriones”’ (Rubel 1925: 231). The witnessing of ‘spectacula’ was especially forbidden to the clergy. Chabham defined three main categories: ‘(1) the acrobats, jugglers, and masked performers, (2) the slandering rogues who follow the retinues of great men, (3) those who frequent taverns and “loose assemblies” and there sing songs which move to wantonness’ (Rubel 1925: 233). They have no chance of salvation. The exceptions are those who sing about saints to comfort the sick and needy.

Over time, many edicts were issued to restrict the movements and livelihood of wandering performers: the legal and moral position of comedians has always been a dubious one and theologians have been mainly dismissive, with the notable exception of Erasmus and his Praise of Folly. Pascal, the high priest of ennui, wrote ‘Great wit, bad character’ (Pascal 1966: 242), perhaps seeing that indulgence in joking and frivolity was a deviation from the study of God.

5.

‘so many ruffians, blasphemers, and swinge bucklers, so many drunkards, tosspots, whoremasters, dancers, fiddlers, and minstrels, dice players and maskers, fencers, thieves [&] interlude players’.

(Northbrooke 1843: 76)

Northbrooke’s A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays and Interludes with Other Idle Pastimes (written in 1577) is a scholarly if lengthy diatribe against ‘vain plays and interludes’ in which his apoplectic condemnation knows few limits. He has a strong turn of insult and there are few who are immune to his venom: ‘jolly yonkers and lusty brutes […] adulterers, unchaste, and lewd persons, and idle rogues […] dicers, carders, mummers and dancers’ (Northbrooke 1843: 11–12). One can almost see the flecks of bile spattering the manuscript. And this is only the introduction.

The list of insults is a lost art in the era of the sound bite, and Cracker John weighs in on the ‘evil and unprofitable arts, as of interludes, stage plays, jugglings, and false sleights, witchcrafts, speculations, divinations, or fortune-tellings and other vain and naughty curious kinds of arts’ (Northbrooke 1843: 56). The punishment for those ‘idle, vagrant and masterless persons, that used to loiter and would not work […] [is to] have a hole burned through the gristle of one of his ears’ (Northbrooke 1843: 76). If he is caught again, he will be hanged. However, Northbrooke did allow ‘honest jesting […] [not] jesting that is full of scurrility and filthiness’ (Northbrooke 1843: 69). What little pleasure he derived appear to be from proscribing that of others: a life spent in denial needs some distractions after all.

Like many bitten by the Jesus bug, he tends towards excessive condemnation for relatively minor infractions: the stage is one of Satan’s ways to obscure the word of God. We have to contextualize Northbrooke (and Prynne later) with the development of Protestant austerity: hard work brings us closer to God, Sunday is for worship not leisure, and holidays are a papal corruption. The Church and state’s desire to excise blasphemy or sedition intensified when they realized that the stage offered a space for public dissent and moved to curb it.

6.

Our whole course of life is but matter of laughter.

(Pliny in Burton 1932: 45)

In his compendious Anatomy of Melancholy, written in 1621, Burton examines depression and, using the discredited theory of humours, makes a great many bizarre suggestions and wayward conclusions, tempered with humour and bombast. Burton (1932: 51) argues that if there be laughter it should be served with scorn: folly in the form of love provokes ‘laughter to see an amorous fool torment himself for a wench; weep, howl for a misshapen slut’. Like the Stoics, Burton (1932: 76) sees that moderation in merriment is preferred lest one’s countrymen deem one mad: ‘do not laugh overmuch or be over-sad’. There is a medieval association of laughter and madness, as both imply a loss of control, and hence the court fool’s ambiguous status. Burton’s remedy for melancholy is puritan excessive moderation, and he seeks ‘to correct these spendthrifts and prodigal sons, enforce idle persons to work, [and] drive drunkards off the ale-house’ (Burton 1932: 97). The professional joker can expect a life of poverty, and contrary to Donatus ‘that comedian Terence […] perceived himself to be forsaken and poor, he voluntarily banished himself to Stymphalus, a base town in Arcadia, and there miserably died’ (Burton 1932: 357).

William Prynne, in his 1632 Histriomastix, condemned in somewhat protracted terms the indulgence of theatre: ‘The profession of play-poets, of stage-players; together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of stageplayes, are unlawfull, infamous and misbeseeming Christians’.⁵ Nor was he keen on ‘the unlawfulnes of acting, of beholding academicall enterlu...