ABSTRACT
Aristotle differentiates comedy and tragedy on the basis of the sorts of people each represents: those inferior with respect to virtue (phaulos) on the one hand, and the noble (spoudaios) on the other. Comic characters’ vice is not wicked but ridiculous and, as described in the Nicomachean Ethics, involves deviation from a virtuous mean, disharmony between the rational and non-rational faculties of the soul, and self-ignorance – points on which Jonson and several Renaissance commentators concur. In contrast to tragic hamartia, which is directly related to plot, comic error is a flaw in character. What integrates comic error with plot is the device of the hoax: just as tragedy’s pathos or suffering results from tragic hamartia, so the hoax responds to comic error. Pathos and the hoax are both uniquely sophisticated components of plot, interactions not merely inflicted on their victims, but actively responded to in surprising yet plausible ways.
