The Meanings of Comedy* - Shakespeare Navigators

4+ TIIE SPIRIT OF COMEDY
panion who battens upon mischief and delights in min" He does
not yet know that the one who goads him-the Tempter-is a deputy
of God. And the eiron, who can put on the features of the buffoon
and scapegoat, is, in his other self, a mocker, blasphemer, and Offender.
He embodies, again, tlle side of the god that must be rebelled
against before the god can be worshiped. God must be hated before
he can be loved, denied before he is believed. The comedian plays
the role of Doubting Thomas. He is at once a stone rejected by the
builder, and the cornerstone of the temple. Comedy is destructive
and creative. So Falstafl like Socrates, has a double nature and a
double fate: eiron and alazon, tempter and clown, hero and knave,
the great god Pan and also Pharmakos-he who is expelled with
communal sins heaped on his head.
Falstaff is a central image in comedy. Symbolically he is the Fool;
and the province of the Fool is the whole wide circuit of life and
death, laughter and tears, wisdom and ignorance.ll The fool is comic
man. He is no mechanical figure. His gestures have daemonic power,
and he carries his scepter by right of ancient rule. We fear him as
god; we laugh at him as clown. All the ambiguities and ambivalences
of comic action pivot on this archetypal hero of many guises.
The fool wears motley-the particolor of human nature-and quickly
changes one mask for another, putting on indifferently and recklessly
the shifting features of man, playing with gusto more roles than are
suitable to the tragic hero. The fool at last proves to be the clown;
and the clown is He Who Gets Slapped-and "is none the worse
for his slapping." He is resilient with a vitality lacking to the tragic
hero, who must accept his misfortune and his responsibility with a
stoic face, with a steadier logic than the absurd logic of comedy.
In general one may distinguish two orders of fool, natural and
artificial. The natural fool is the archaic victim who diverts the wrath
of the gods from the anointed figure of the king. He is the alter ego
of the Successful Man, who needs to exempt himself from the jealousy
and ill will of the Olympians and who therefore provides himself
with someone insolent or ignorant, whom the gods smite. The
fool is vicarious Sufferer. He is reviled, beaten, and stricken; but he
has the privilege of vilifying the Prosperous Man; he is free to humble
the Exalted by mockery. The fool saves the hero from the awful
sin of pride (hubris). He is the Ugly One who by slandering, guards
the king or even the priest, from the evil eye. He may be dwarfed
11 In discussing the nature of the Fool and his many roles, I have relied
heavily on Enid Welsford: The FooI, 1935, as well as on Kris: Psychoanalytic
Etplorations in Art, 1952, and J. A. K. Thomson: Irony, 1927,