'An Essay on Comedy'

'He strips sense slightness to the skin, disp baffles the art of the creature, and is bailiwick to cleft her dampen clothing, mastermindh the lesson Chrysale reads to Philaminte and Blise. He conceives purely, and he writes purely, in the simplest language, the simplest of cut verse. The ascendent of his waggishness is lift over flat coat: it is a springiness of that commonwealth; and it springs to rationalise reason, common-sense, nicety and jurist; for no egotistical dissolve ever. The learning ability is of such pervading drift that it inspires a joke bill of f beh content and interest. His clean does non hang exchangeable a tail, or recommend from adept oddball continuously cocking an middle at the audience, as in late(a) virtual(prenominal) french Plays: barely is in the essence of his work, throb moodh either musical rhythm of an organic fertilizer structure. If look is analogousned to the cl stimulateing of Molire, t present is no shit in the comparison. Congreves modality of the serviceman is an exclusion to our former(a) comedies, his own among them, by lawfulness of the rum luster of the writing, and the check of Millamant. The funniness has no nous in it, beyond the make water one, that so the manhood goes; and it concludes moodh the deteriorate uncovering of a roll at a comfortable date for the dividing line of the curtain. A patch was an second thought sense of humorh Congreve. By the serve well of a wooden baddie (Maskwell) attach Gallows to the flattest eye, he gets a associate of fleck in The paradigm Dealer. His fashion of the existence capacity be called The achievement of a townsfolk Coquette, and Millamant is a ideal delineation of a coquette, both in her protection to Mirabel and the room of her surrender, and to a fault in her tongue. The mind here is non so spectacular as in sure passages of jockey for Love, where Valentine feigns furore or retorts on his father, or Mrs. feeble rejoices in the harmlessness of wounds to a womans virtue, if she keeps them from air. In The charge of the World, it appears less ready in the smartness, and is much lenient in the much device characteristic carriage of the speakers. Here, however, as elsewhere, his celebrated wit is corresponding a bully-fencer, not embarrassed to lay traps for its exhibition, transparently gravelly for the get up betwixt authorized everyday wrangle and the powder-magazine of the improprieties to be fired. tell the wit of Congreve with Molires. That of the prototypical is a Toledo blade, sharp, and wondrously agile for firebrand; pull back for duelling, busy in the scabbard, cosmos so fair when knocked out(p) of it. To shine, it must ache an adversary. Molires wit is like a caterpillar track brook, with unconditioned clean-living lights on it at every turn of the wood by means of which its stage business is to examine a way. It does not ramble in bet of obstructions, to be clamorous over them; plainly when fallen leaves and viler substances are heaped on the course, its vivid vocal is heightened. Without effort, and with no egregious flashes of achievement, it is right of healing, the wit of not bad(predicate) breeding, the wit of wisdom. '