Page:Musset - On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1884.djvu/40

28 PROLEGOMENA. throughout a striking likeness to itself — a likeness totally wanting in the case of tragedy, which is at the best a somewhat artificial thing, and which in the hands of French dramatists has always been artificial in a high degree. The comedy has of course been better or worse according to circumstances. When dramatists tried to imitate the highly conventional drama of Terence, or to transfer to France the complicated intrigues of Spain ; or when they contented themselves with simply ringing the changes on the situa- tions of Moliere or other great writers, the drama languished. When they shook off these trammels and went back to the life of their own day or to the general and perennial character- istics of humanity, it flourished. But it is very curious and instructive to compare the immense number of different names which comic writing has borne and still bears in France with the real similarity which runs through all the kinds to which they correspond. Moreover, with the excep- tion of the prose fiction of the last half-century, it would probably be impossible to mention any branch of literature the productions of which are relatively, and in proportion to the excellence attainable, so uniformly good as the works of French comic writers. The suitableness of the national language to comic dialogue, of the national manners to comic action, of the national intellect to the comprehension and arrangement of the comic plot, have all helped to produce this result. The difficulty with which French adapts itself to the expression of the highest poetry is not felt in comedy. The main faults of the French character, its want of reverence, of reticence, of depth of feeling, are not felt here. Indeed they are positive stimulants to the production and the enjoyment of comedy. Moreover, the propensity for moralising, which oddly enough accompanies these defects, is useful in comic writing, and sometimes, as in the case of Moliere, it produces the very best and highest kind of comic work — the work which in satirising preaches but without dulness, and in preaching satirises but without scurrility. Therefore it is that these forces remaining the same and being for the most part left to their natural working, the work produced is remarkably alike. When in the first French comedy Adam