ABSTRACT
A clear distinction must be drawn between the normal and the usual. Tragedy of course deals with unusual situations and consequently with unusual states of mind; but people should always feel that the situation is one in which people might have been placed, and that in similar circumstances people should, or at least very probably might, have felt as the characters of the tragedy do. The abnormality of comic characters is not absolute; people should feel that they are capable of behaving normally if they would. A more serious objection to this formula is that comedy is not necessarily at all realistic in technique. All women appear abnormal to all men, and all men abnormal to all women; and rightly, for sex carries with it specialisation and so a departure from the common human pattern. In its historical beginnings comedy was a species of authorised licence.
