ABSTRACT
Comedy has its place, and its place is determined by its other: tragedy. In April of 1822, Elia lamented the extinction of comedy in his own age. Although Elia scolds those who are startled and incensed by the “loose pranks” of a stage libertine, he does so not to reassure us of comedy’s basic impotence, but to separate comedy, once and for all, from the world of right and wrong. Comedy, following Morton Gurewitch’s line of thinking, celebrates the irrational and can therefore accept human suffering without trying to work though it in order to transcend it. Comedy functions, continues Gurewitch, “as a disorderly arena in which restraint, rationalism, and responsibility are swept aside by the anarchic winds of farce”. James Kincaid suggests as much when he asks us to imagine comedy not as the opposite of tragedy, but as the whole story. The tragic view of things is especially sad because it demands moral conflict and sacrifice.
