COMEDY

LAUGHTER 123is a laughing animal, any more than the horse neighs on alloccasions because he is a neighing animal. But as rational beings,we are to regulate ourselves suitably, harmoniously relaxing theausterity and over-tension of our serious pursuits, notinharmoniously breaking them up altogether.(Clement of Alexandria, 1983:250)In the process of determining pious deportment, laughter became subjectto the rules of appropriate behaviour and the rational ordinances of selfcontrolthat kept base instincts in check. Clement was particularly waryof the susceptibility of women to laughter, equating their mirth withsexual immorality: ‘the discordant relaxation of countenance in the caseof women is called a giggle, and is meretricious laughter’ (Clement ofAlexandria, 1983:250). Ascetic control of the body was clearly troubledby occasions that might convulse, distort, and overthrow it, and inwomen the repercussions might be damnable. Similarly, early monasticlife held laughing to be one of its greatest crimes. As Jerry Palmerwrites:In the earliest monastic regulations (in the fifth century) laughteris condemned as the grossest breach of the rule of silence, andlater it is considered a breach of the rule of humility; it is alsoconsidered the greatest dirtying of the mouth, which should be afilter for good and evil to enter and leave the body; therefore itmust be prevented.(Palmer, 1994:44)Both examples, of female reserve and monastic silence, are indicativeof the belief that ‘the more the body was closed against the world, themore the soul was opened up to God’ (Gilhus, 1997:67).While the early church made significant attempts to banish andcondemn laughter, the medieval period saw ecclesiastical authoritiesdrawing it into the liturgical calendar and distinguishing between goodlaughter and bad. The enigmatic question of whether or not Jesus hadlaughed in his early life enjoyed a vogue in ecclesiastical society, somuch that in the thirteenth century, the University of Paris organized anannual conference on the subject (Le Goff, 1997:43). In Chapter 2, wesaw how medieval culture made the figure of folly into a universalsymbol of human ignorance. Similarly in medieval morality plays the roleof Vice was given to a clown to better underline the need for folly to beovercome before Mankind can proceed to Grace. ‘If there were no