The Depth of Comedy

Dr X. posts this from the back room of the Drones Club:

"I have been hacking my way through a book I set aside long ago, Knight's pioneering work of Shakespeare interpretation, The Wheel of Fire. I set it aside long ago on the off chance that if I waited ten or fifteen years, I would be better-able to understand what the hell he was talking about.

"So far, so good. It's interesting if you're into that sort of thing - Knight is credited with being the first critic to give a coherent account of Measure for Measure, and Eliot felt Knight had set him straight on a few important points in Hamlet. I also suspect the Laird will approve his claim that Timon of Athens is among The Bard's greatest works.

"Knight can only be taken in measured doses, however. He is drawn to darkness the way a moth is drawn to light. In his essay on Hamlet ('The Embassy of Death'), he draws our attention to a series of unbearable scenes, remarking that 'it might be objected that I have concentrated unduly on the unpleasant parts of the play. It has been my intention to concentrate. They are the most significant parts.'

"So off to the antidote, Wodehouse.

"It is the conventional wisdom that comedy cannot truly move us, that tragedy is the deeper art. But I say it is comedy that instructs. It is in the nature of tragedy that the author assumes a God-like pose, enforcing the hideous strictures of some alternative universe, driving the afflicted characters down the dusty road to their inescapable doom. But comedy is a completely different matter. The creator of great comedy is always fallible, always as much the butt of the joke as the maker, always human. Where the tragedian lectures and controls, the creator of great comedy laughs with us, and collaborates with us in our own entertainment.

These friendly Russians have posted an essay on Wodehouse by Stephen Fry, in which he notes the great man's ability to make the reader a participant in his comic sketches. And I wish to approvingly quote its conclusion:

" 'I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today – whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me. But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.

" 'He mocked himself sometimes because he knew that a great proportion of his readers came from prisons and hospitals. At the risk of being sententious, isn't it true that we are all of us, for a great part of our lives, sick or imprisoned, all of us in need of this remarkable healing spirit, this balm for hurt minds?' "