Letter XIX

On Comedy

If in most English tragedies the heroes are bombastic and the heroines extravagant, the style in comedy, by contrast, is more natural. But its naturalness would often seem to us the naturalness of debauchery rather than decency. Everything is called by its name. A woman angry with her lover wishes him the p…… In a play performed every day, a drunkard disguises himself as a priest, makes a disturbance, and is arrested by the watch. He says he is a parish priest; they ask whether he has a parish: he replies that he has an excellent cure for the c…… One of the most decent comedies, entitled The Careless Husband, opens with the husband having a maid seated beside him scratch his head. His wife enters and exclaims: “What influence can one not gain by being a w……!” Some cynics defend these coarse expressions, relying on the example of Horace, who names every part of the human body and every pleasure it affords outright. Such images gain by being veiled among us. But Horace, who seems as much at home in brothels as at court, and knows the customs of both realms perfectly, speaks of what a respectable man may do with a young girl to satisfy his needs as plainly as if he were speaking of a walk or a supper. It is added that the Romans in Augustus's day were as polished as the Parisians, and that the same Horace who praises the emperor Augustus for reforming morals conformed without shame to the usage of his century, which allowed girls, boys, and explicit names. Strange indeed—if anything could be strange—that Horace, speaking the language of debauchery, should be a reformer's favorite, and that Ovid, for speaking the language of gallantry, should have been exiled by a libertine, a fraud, a murderer named Octavius, who won the empire through crimes deserving the ultimate punishment.

Be that as it may, Bayle holds that expressions make no difference; in this he, the cynics, and the Stoics appear mistaken, for every thing has different names that portray it from different aspects and give very different ideas of it. The words magistrate and petty lawyer, gentleman and would-be gentleman, officer and swindler, man of religion and monk, do not mean the same thing. The consummation of marriage, and everything that contributes to that great work, will be described differently by the parish priest, the husband, the doctor, and a young man in love. The word the last of these uses will conjure up the image of pleasure; the doctor's terms will suggest only anatomical diagrams; the husband will speak with decency of what the indiscreet young man has spoken of boldly; and the priest will try to convey the idea of a sacrament. Words, then, are not indifferent, since no two words are synonymous.

It must also be considered that, if the Romans permitted coarse expressions in satires read by only a few people, they did not tolerate indecent words onstage. For, as La Fontaine says,

Chaste are the ears,

Though the eyes may be roguish.

In short, no word should be spoken in public that a respectable woman could not repeat.

The English have borrowed, disguised, and spoiled most of Molière's plays. They wanted to make a Tartuffe. It was impossible for that subject to succeed in London: people seldom enjoy portraits of people they do not know. One of the great advantages of the English nation is that it has no Tartuffes. For there to be false devotees, there would first have to be true ones. The name devotee is hardly known there, but the name honest man is widely known. One sees no fools who place their souls in other people's hands, none of those petty aspirants who establish, in a neighborhood of the city, a despotic empire over a few little women, once flirtatious and always weak, and over a few men still weaker and more contemptible than they. Philosophy, freedom, and climate foster misanthropy: London, which has no Tartuffes, is full of Timons. Thus The Misanthrope, or The Plain Dealer, is one of the good comedies to be found in London. It was written when Charles II and his brilliant court were trying to cure the nation of its dark disposition. Wycherley, its author, was the acknowledged lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, the king's mistress. This man, who spent his life in the highest society, painted its follies and weaknesses in the boldest colors. The strokes in Wycherley's play are bolder than Molière's, but they also have less subtlety and decorum. The English author corrected the sole defect of Molière's play: its lack of plot and dramatic interest. The English play holds one's interest and its plot is ingenious, but too bold for our manners.

Its hero is a ship's captain full of courage, candor, and contempt for humankind. He distrusts a wise and sincere friend, and will not even look at a woman who loves him tenderly. Instead, he has placed his complete trust in a false friend, the most unworthy man alive, and given his heart to the most flirtatious and treacherous of women. He is quite certain that this woman is a Penelope, and this false friend a Cato. He leaves to fight the Dutch, entrusts all his money, his jewels, and everything he owns to this good woman, and commends the woman herself to the faithful friend on whom he relies so completely. Meanwhile, the genuinely honorable man whom he distrusts so much boards ship with him; and the woman he has not even deigned to look at disguises herself as a page and makes the voyage without the captain noticing her sex throughout the campaign.

After blowing up his ship in battle, the captain returns to London, without help, ship, or money, accompanied by his page and his friend, unaware of the friendship of the one or the love of the other. He goes straight to that pearl among women, expecting to find her with his strongbox and her fidelity: he finds her married to the respectable rogue in whom he had confided, and nothing he entrusted to her has been kept for him, least of all her fidelity. My man can scarcely believe that a virtuous woman could play such tricks; but to convince him still more thoroughly, this worthy lady falls in love with the little page and tries to take him by force. Yet justice must be done, and in a play vice must be punished and virtue rewarded. So it turns out in the end that the captain takes the page's place, sleeps with his unfaithful woman, makes a cuckold of his treacherous friend, runs him through with a good thrust of his sword, gets back his strongbox, and marries his page. You will notice that the play is also stuffed with a Countess of Pimbesche, an elderly litigant and a relative of the captain's, who is quite the funniest creature and finest character on the stage.

Wycherley also drew from Molière a play no less singular and no less daring: a kind of School for Wives.

The principal character is a rake with a string of conquests, the terror of London's husbands, who, to make his success more certain, conceives the idea of spreading a rumor that during his last illness the surgeons thought it advisable to make a eunuch of him. With this fine reputation, all the husbands bring him their wives, and the poor man has no problem now but choosing among them. He especially favors a little country woman of considerable innocence and appetite, who cuckolds her husband with a good faith worth more than the cunning of the most experienced ladies. This play may not, if you like, be a school for good morals; but it truly is a school for wit and good comedy.

A Sir Vanbrugh wrote comedies still more entertaining, though less ingenious. This knight was a man of pleasure and, in addition, a poet and architect. People say he wrote with as much delicacy and elegance as he built with heaviness. It was he who built the famous palace of Blenheim, a massive and lasting monument to our unfortunate battle of Hochstedt. If only its rooms were as broad as its walls are thick, the palace would be quite comfortable.

Vanbrugh's epitaph expressed the wish that the earth might not lie lightly upon him, since in life he had loaded it so inhumanely. Having made a visit to France before the fine war of 1701, this knight was put in the Bastille and kept there for a time, without ever learning what had earned him this distinction from our government. He wrote a comedy in the Bastille; what seems very strange to me is that the play contains not a single barb against the country where he suffered this violence.

Of all the English, the one who carried the glory of the comic theater furthest is the late Mr. Congreve. He wrote only a few plays, but every one is excellent of its kind. The rules of the theater are rigorously observed in them. They abound in characters shaded with extreme subtlety; one encounters not the slightest bad joke; everywhere one hears the language of honorable people accompanying the deeds of scoundrels. This proves that he knew his world well and moved in what is called good society.

His plays are the wittiest and the most exact; Vanbrugh's are the most cheerful; and Wycherley's are the strongest.

It is worth noting that none of these fine minds spoke ill of Molière. Only bad English authors have spoken ill of that great man.

Moreover, do not ask me to go into the least detail here about these English plays, of which I am such a great partisan, or to recount a witticism or joke of Wycherley or Congreve. No one laughs at a translation. If you want to know English comedy, there is no other way but to go to London, stay there three years, learn English well, and see a comedy every day. I take little pleasure in reading Plautus and Aristophanes: why? Because I am neither Greek nor Roman. The finesse of the witticisms, the allusions, the aptness of each remark—all that is lost on a foreigner.

It is otherwise with tragedy. It deals only with grand passions and heroic follies consecrated by ancient errors of myth or history. Oedipus and Electra belong to the Spanish, the English, and ourselves as much as to the Greeks. But good comedy is a speaking portrait of a nation's absurdities; unless you know the nation thoroughly, you can hardly judge the portrait.

The English are reproached for a stage often bloodstained and adorned with dead bodies; they are reproached for gladiators who fight half-naked before young women and sometimes leave with a nose and a cheek missing. Their defense is that they imitate the Greeks in the art of tragedy, and the Romans in the art of cutting off noses. But their theater is rather far from that of Sophocles and Euripides; and as for the Romans, one must admit that a nose and a cheek are very little compared with the multitude of victims who slaughtered one another in the circus for the pleasure of Roman ladies.

At times their comedies have featured dances, and those dances have been allegories of a singular taste. Despotic power and republican government were represented in 1709 by a thoroughly gallant dance. First a king appeared who, after a leap, delivered a great kick to the backside of his prime minister; the minister passed it on to a second, the second to a third, and finally the man who received the last kick represented the body of the nation, which took revenge on no one. All this was done in time to the music. Republican government was represented by a circle dance in which everyone gave and received equally. Yet this is the country that produced Addisons, Popes, Lockes, and Newtons!

On Comedy

If heroes in most English tragedies are pompous and heroines are extravagant, at least the style is more natural in comedy. But we would often find that naturalness more like indecency than good manners. They call everything by its name. A woman angry with her lover wishes him the p…… An actor playing a drunkard in a play performed every day disguises himself as a priest, causes a disturbance, and is arrested by the watch. He says he is a parish priest. Someone asks him if he has a parish living; he replies that he has an excellent cure for the c…… One of the most decent comedies, called The Careless Husband, begins with this husband having a servant scratch his head as she sits beside him. His wife comes in and cries, “What authority you can gain by being a w……!” Some cynics defend such crude expressions. They appeal to Horace, who calls every part of the human body and all the pleasures it gives by name. We prefer to keep such images veiled. But Horace seems as well suited to brothels as to court, and understands the customs of both worlds perfectly. He speaks as openly about what a respectable man can do with a young girl when he needs to as he would about a walk or a supper. People add that Romans in Augustus's day were as polite as Parisians, and that Horace himself praised Emperor Augustus for reforming morals. Yet he followed, without shame, the custom of his century, which allowed girls, boys, and plain names for things. How strange, if anything could be strange, that Horace became a reformer's favorite by using the language of debauchery, while Ovid was exiled for using the language of courtship by a libertine, a cheat, and a murderer named Octavius, who reached the throne through crimes deserving the harshest punishment.

Whatever the case, Bayle claims that the words used make no difference. He, the cynics, and the Stoics seem wrong about this. Each thing has different names that show it in different lights and give us very different ideas of it. A magistrate is not a petty lawyer, a gentleman is not a pretentious imitation of one, an officer is not a swindler, and a religious person is not the same as a monk. A priest, a husband, a doctor, and a young man in love will each speak differently of consummating a marriage and everything that helps bring it about. The young man's word will suggest an image of pleasure. The doctor's terms will call up only anatomical diagrams. The husband will say decently what the indiscreet young man says boldly. The priest will try to convey the idea of a sacrament. Words do matter, then, since there are no synonyms.

We should also consider that, although the Romans allowed crude language in satires read by only a few people, they did not tolerate indecent words onstage. As La Fontaine says,

Ears remain chaste,

Even when eyes behave badly.

In short, no word should be spoken in public that a respectable woman could not repeat.

The English have taken, disguised, and spoiled most of Molière's plays. They tried to write a Tartuffe. That subject could never succeed in London, for people hardly enjoy portraits of people they do not know. One of the great advantages of the English nation is that it has no Tartuffes. To have false devotees, it would first need real ones. The very word “devout” is hardly known there, though people often speak of “a decent man.” You find no fools putting their souls in other people's hands, nor those petty climbers who set up despotic power over a few women in one part of town, women once involved in love affairs and still weak, and over a few men even weaker and more contemptible. Philosophy, freedom, and climate lead to misanthropy. London, which has no Tartuffes, is full of Timons. So The Misanthrope, or The Plain Dealer, is one of London's good comedies. It was written while Charles II and his brilliant court were trying to rid the nation of its gloomy temper. Wicherley, who wrote it, was openly the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, the king's mistress. This man spent his life among high society and painted its absurdities and weaknesses in the strongest colors. The points made in Wicherley's play are bolder than Molière's, but also less subtle and less proper. The English writer corrected the only flaw in Molière's play: it lacks a plot and anything to hold the audience's interest. The English play does hold our interest, and its plot is clever, but it is too daring for our customs.

Its hero is a ship's captain, brave and honest but contemptuous of humanity. He has a wise and sincere friend whom he distrusts, and a woman who loves him dearly whom he does not even bother to look at. Instead, he puts all his trust in a false friend, the most unworthy man alive, and gives his heart to the most flirtatious and treacherous of women. He is quite sure that this woman is a Penelope and the false friend a Cato. He leaves to fight the Dutch, entrusting all his money, jewels, and everything else he owns to this virtuous woman. He also places the woman herself in the care of that faithful friend, whom he trusts so deeply. Meanwhile, the truly honest man whom he distrusts so much boards the ship with him. The woman he has not even deigned to look at disguises herself as a page and goes along. The captain does not notice her sex throughout the whole campaign.

After blowing up his ship during a battle, the captain returns to London without help, without a ship, and without money, accompanied by his page and his friend. He knows neither the friend's loyalty nor the page's love. He goes straight to that pearl among women, expecting to find her still there with his money box and her fidelity. He finds her married to the upright crook he had trusted. Neither his deposit nor anything else has been kept for him. My man finds it terribly hard to believe a virtuous woman could play such tricks. To convince him all the better, this fine lady falls in love with the little page and tries to take the page by force. But justice must be done, and in a play vice must be punished and virtue rewarded. So in the end the captain takes the page's place, sleeps with his unfaithful lover, makes a cuckold of his treacherous friend, runs a sword right through his body, gets his money box back, and marries his page. You will notice that the play also has a Countess of Pimbesche thrown in: an old woman who loves lawsuits and is related to the captain. She really is the funniest creature and the best character on the stage.

Wicherley also took from Molière another play no less unusual or daring. It is a sort of School for Wives.

The main character is a rogue with a string of lovers, the terror of London's husbands. To make his affairs safer, he decides to spread a rumor that, during his last illness, surgeons thought it best to make him a eunuch. With this fine reputation, all the husbands bring their wives to him. The poor man now has only the difficulty of choosing among them. He especially favors a young country woman with a great deal of innocence and passion. She makes a cuckold of her husband with a sincerity better than the scheming of the most experienced ladies. You may say this play is not a school for good morals. But it truly is a school for wit and good comedy.

A knight named Van Brugh wrote comedies that were even funnier but less inventive. This knight loved pleasure and was also a poet and an architect. People say that he wrote as delicately and elegantly as he built crudely. He built the famous Blenheim Palace, a heavy, lasting monument to our unfortunate battle of Hochstedt. If its rooms were only as wide as its walls are thick, it would be a comfortable building.

Van Brugh's epitaph says that people hoped the earth would not lie lightly on him, since during his life he had so mercilessly loaded it down. This knight made a trip to France before the fine war of 1701. He was put in the Bastille and stayed there for some time, never able to find out what had earned him this distinction from our ministers. He wrote a comedy in the Bastille. What seems very strange to me is that the play contains not one attack on the country where he suffered this abuse.

Of all the English, the man who has done the most for the reputation of comedy is the late Mr. Congreve. He wrote only a few plays, but all are excellent in their kind. They follow the rules of theater strictly. They are full of characters drawn with extreme subtlety. You will not find a single bad joke in them. Everywhere you hear decent people's language alongside crooks' behavior. This shows how well he knew his world and that he moved in what is called good society.

His plays are the wittiest and most precise; Van Brugh's are the most cheerful, and Wicherley's are the strongest.

It is worth noting that none of these talented writers spoke badly of Molière. Only bad English writers have said anything bad about this great man.

For the rest, do not ask me to give even the smallest details of these English plays, which I admire so much, or to quote a witty line or a joke by Wicherley or Congreve. No one laughs at a joke in translation. If you want to know English comedy, there is only one way: go to London, stay there three years, learn English well, and go to a play every day. I do not take much pleasure in reading Plautus and Aristophanes. Why? Because I am neither Greek nor Roman. The fine points of wit, the allusions, and the right timing are all lost on a foreigner.

Tragedy is different. It deals only with great passions and heroic follies made familiar by old errors in myth or history. Oedipus and Electra belong to the Spanish, the English, and us, just as they belong to the Greeks. But good comedy is a vivid picture, with people talking, of a nation's absurdities. Unless you know the nation thoroughly, you can hardly judge the picture.

People criticize the English for stages that are often bloody and strewn with dead bodies. They criticize their gladiators, who fight half naked in front of young girls and sometimes leave missing a nose and a cheek. The English say in defense that they imitate the Greeks in the art of tragedy and the Romans in the art of cutting off noses. But their theater is rather far from the theater of Sophocles and Euripides. As for the Romans, we must admit that a nose and a cheek are very little compared with the crowds of victims who slaughtered one another in the arena for the pleasure of Roman ladies.

They have sometimes had dances in their comedies, and these dances have been allegories of an unusual kind. In 1709, despotic power and republican government were represented by a very elegant dance. First you saw a king who, after a jump, gave his chief minister a mighty kick in the backside. The minister gave the same kick to a second man, the second to a third, and the man who got the last kick represented the mass of the nation. He had nobody to kick in turn. It was all done in time to the music. Republican government was shown by a round dance in which everyone gave and received kicks equally. And this is the country that produced people like Addison, Pope, Locke, and Newton!