The Meanings of Comedy* - Shakespeare Navigators

Sypher I rrm MEANTNcs oF coMEDy 47
Hamlet's motives are devilish-Mephistophelian; his vocation is picaresque,
to ask impudent questions and lead us along the narrow ledge
where the immoralist walks, making us quarter our thoughts with an
obsessive guile. Hamlet, I{ephisto, Byron, Stendhal, Nietzsche, and Gide
are heroes vv'ho belong in a comic theatre where man is goaded and
teased, led down the dimmest passes of sin, to see what is learned
by evil.
lVhen he appears as tempter, the fool-the comic hero who stands
"61115ids"-11ust put on the mask. He disguises himself as clown or
devil, wearing as need arises the garb of buffoon, ironist, madman.
He must lead us, finally, to the witches' kitchen and the Walpurgis
Night; or to the wilderness where we meet our "shadow" selves
face to face, although we have disorvned these selves in our public
life. There in the wilderness or on the Brocken the god in us is
confronted by the Adversary our "other" self, who lays before us
illusions of pomp, knowledge, and pleasure. fn tempting us the Adversary
must have the features of innocence, must charm us with
mannerly good will, gaiety, finesse, and high spirits. He may seem as
honest as Iago, whose motiveless malignity wears the bland mask of
friendship. fago is the Socratic interrogator who destroys us with our
own ideals; yet he is an iilusion: "f am not what I am," he says.
This Adversary may speak folly or profanity; or jest insanely, as did
Nietzsche, who tempted the whole respectable middle class with his
madness. His Satyr-Heroes have recognized Dionysus as god and they
"reuert to the innocence of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant
monsteni, who perhaps come from a ghostly bout of murder, arson,
rape, and torture with bravado and moral equanimity, as though
merely some wild student's prank had been played."
The rebel, the immoralist, the free and licensed self in this terrible
comedy of the future has passed "beyond" and looks back from a
new and daring perspective upon the morality of the herd, which is
hollow. Nietzsche's comic hero is the Despiser, the Blond Beast; or
else he is the Great Sick Man overcome by his disgust, his nausea
as he examines, from his point "outsider" the premises of a morality
we have never examined. To feel the spell of this Tempter we must
take the awful risk of entering into a "boundary-situation" where
nothing is taken for granted and where all our values must be found
anew without help from "the others." Here we walk alone upon the
margin of Reason. The Adversary goes with us to this highest precipice
of comedy, the edge of the abyss where we glance with Nietzsche
into Chaos. There we must stand on the brink of Nonsense and
Absurdity and not be dizzy. If we do not fall, or plunge, we may