COMEDY

LAUGHTER 129Remedy against Vice, and a kind of Specifick against Superstition andMelancholy Delusion’ (Shaftesbury, 1988:188). In addition, Hutchesonmakes the elegant point that if laughter were only prompted by a feelingof preeminence, then it would surely be easier to elicit. ‘Strange!’, hewrites, ‘that none of the Hobbists banish canary birds and squirrels, andlap-dogs and pugs, and cats out of their houses, and substitute in theirplaces asses, and owls, and snails, and oysters to be merry upon’(Hutcheson, 1750:12). In other words, if a person can be moved tolaughter by confirmation of his or her superiority, then any time theyfelt like laughing they need only look upon the animals.The idea that most clearly represents a rejection of superiority theoryis Hutcheson’s belief that the risible emanated from a juxtaposition ofincompatible contrasts. By the means of a discussion of great men onthe toilet he explains that the ludicrous is generated by the combinationof high and low in a single scene: ‘the jest is increased by the dignity,gravity, or modesty of the person,’ he writes, ‘which shows that it is thiscontrast, or opposition of ideas and dignity and meanness, which is theoccasion of laughter’ (Hutcheson, 1750:21). In the image of the greatman otherwise occupied, greatness and gravity collide with loweringbodily urgency. Henry Fielding makes a similar point in his preface tothe novel Joseph Andrews (1742). The unfortunate, deformed, ordisproportionate are not humorous in themselves, he writes, but maybecome so if they adopt an affectation:Surely he hath a very ill-framed Mind, who can look on Ugliness,Infirmity, or Poverty, as ridiculous in themselves: nor do I believeany Man living who meets a dirty Fellow riding through theStreets in a Cart, is struck with an Idea of the Ridiculous from it;but if he should see the same Figure descend from his Coach andSix, or bolt from his Chair with his Hat under his Arm, he wouldthen begin to laugh, and with justice.(Fielding, 1980:7)Pursuing the clash of incompatible ideas, James Beattie (1735–1803),professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at the University of Aberdeen,writes in his essay ‘On Laughter and Ludicrous Composition’:Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent,unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered asunited in one complex object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort