Two Kingdoms of Comedy

The poet W. H. Auden writes, in a beautiful essay on Shakespeare, that there are actually two distinct genres, one might even say kingdoms, of comedy. The first he calls "classical" comedy, though it can be found in many cultures and in many periods of history. Classical comedy focuses on exposing people who think too highly of themselves or have some otherwise fantastic self-image and mocking them. "When the curtain falls" at the end of a classical comedy, Auden writes, "the audience is laughing and those on stage are in tears." The audience may laugh because they believe themselves to possess arete--"virtue," or more generally, "excellence"--which those on stage so demonstrably lack.

The other kind of comedy is best illustrated by Shakespeare's plays. Take Much Ado About Nothing, for instance: at the end of that play we see a motley collection of people, few if any of whom have behaved especially well. They have exhibited pride, wrath, jealousy, envy, treachery--most of the deadly sins and a sizable collection of venial ones--and a great deal of what can only be called sheer stupidity, especially on the part of the male lead, Claudio. Yet they are all celebrating, joyously, a double wedding...Auden calls this kind of story "Christian comedy," because it is "based upon the belief that all men are sinners; no one, therefore, whatever his rank or talents, can claim immunity from the comic exposure." This is a model of society and human nature that turns the Greek notion of arete on its head, because on this account the truest excellence is to know that you deserve the "comic exposure"--to know that you need forgiveness. When a play like this comes to its end, "the characters are exposed and forgiven: when the curtain falls, the audience and the characters are laughing together."

-Alan Jacobs, Original Sin, 271-272.

Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight

Something familiar,
Something peculiar,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something appealing,
Something appalling,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns;
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!

Old situations,
New complications,
Nothing portentous or polite;
Tragedy tomorrow,
Comedy tonight!

Something convulsive,
Something repulsive,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something aesthetic,
Something frenetic,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with gods, nothing with fate;
Weighty affairs will just have to wait!

Nothing that's formal,
Nothing that's normal,
No recitations to recite;
Open up the curtain:
Comedy Tonight!

Something erratic,
Something dramatic,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Frenzy and frolic,
Strictly symbolic,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something familiar,
Something peculiar,
Something for everybody:
Comedy tonight!

Something that's gaudy,
Something that's bawdy--
Something for everybawdy!
Comedy tonight!

Nothing that's grim.
Nothing that's Greek.
She plays Medea later this week.

Stunning surprises!
Cunning disguises!
Hundreds of actors out of sight!
Pantaloons and tunics!
Courtesans and eunuchs!
Funerals and chases!
Baritones and basses!
Panderers!
Philanderers!
Cupidity!
Timidity!
Mistakes!
Fakes!
Rhymes!
Crimes!
Tumblers!
Grumblers!
Bumblers!
Fumblers!

No royal curse, no Trojan horse,
And a happy ending, of course!
Goodness and badness,
Man in his madness--
This time it all turns out all right!
Tragedy tomorrow,
Comedy tonight!

-Stephen Sondheim, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Bathroom Humor

I reached my peak as a bathroom humorist in The 2000-Pound Goldfish. The goldfish has been flushed down the toilet, into the sewer, where it comes to weigh two thousand pounds and has slurped five or six people to death. The soldiers are marching into the sewer to kill Bubbles, and Warren gets the idea that if everyone in the city flushed their toilets at, say, ten o'clock, the floodgates would open and Bubbles would be swept out to sea “where she could live the rest of her life in peace and harmony.” This is the section I read aloud to kids, and at this point, some intellectual type raises his hand and says, “Mrs. Byers, goldfish can't live in salt water.” I say, “Listen, I'm the boss of this book, and if I want Bubbles to live in salt water, Bubbles will live in salt water.”

There follows a seven-page countdown in which the announcer is entreating listeners to flush their toilets. “It's five minutes to ten. If you have more than one bathroom, get a neighbor to come flush with you.” “It’s four minutes to ten, open your windows, yell ‘Flush!’ to the people in the streets below.” It takes two pages to get everyone in their bathrooms, and the final countdown is “Five-four-three-two-one-FLUSH!” and if I read this correctly, I never have to actually say the word flush, because the entire school will make the sound of a toilet flushing. It may not sound thrilling to you to hear two hundred kids flushing like toilets, but it has never failed to move me.

-Betsy Byars, "Taking Humor Seriously," The Zena Sutherland Lectures, 216-217.

The Gospel as Comedy...

But [the Gospel] is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy.

-Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, 7.