"Good sense is at once the basis of and the limit to all humor. He who
lacks a fine perception of 'the difference between what things are and
what they ought to be,' as the always-to-be-quoted Hazlitt expressed
it, can never write humor. All the way through we shall find that
mirth is a matter of relationships, of shift, of rigidity trying to be
flexible, of something shocked into something else.
"Let us think of a circle on which four points have been marked:
[Illustration:
5 The Serious 1
4 The Contemptible 2 The Laughable
3 The Ridiculous]
"Beginning with a serious idea, we may swiftly step from point to
point until we return to the serious, with only slight variations from
the original conception. Take the perennial comedy-theme of the impish
collar, and visualize the scenes:
"1. A man starts to button his collar. Nothing is less comical, as
long as the operation proceeds normally.
"2. But the button is too large and his efforts begin to exasperate
him, with the result that his expression and movements become
incongruous. We see, and laugh--though he does not.
"3. He begins to hop around in a mad attempt to button the
unbuttonable, and soon rips off the collar, addressing it in
unparliamentary language.
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