Ugly comedy

In the Poetics , Aristotle gives a brief description of the character and history of comedy: ” Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type – not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain.

“The successive changes through which tragedy passed, and the authors of these changes, are well known, whereas comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors – these and other similar details remain unknown. As for the plot, it came originally from Sicily; but of Athenian writers Crates was the first who abandoning the ‘iambic’ or lampooning form, universalised his themes and plots.”

By this definition, comedy shares a number of features with tragedy. It is an “imitation,” as tragedy is. It includes some “defect” or error, a “hamartia,” the comic equivalent of the mis-named “tragic flaw.” The various rules about unity and about the sequence of beginning-middle-end apply as much to comedy as to tragedy. Comedy provides also a certain catharsis of the emotions, expressed not in pity and fear but in laughter.

Several things, though, distinguish comedy from tragedy. First, comedy imitates characters of the lower type, not nobles and kings as in tragedy. No Greek aristocrat is a fit object of comedy. Second, though comedy deals in error as much as tragedy does, the comic error does not lead to pain or destruction. Finally, comedy is a subdivision of the ugly, since it deals in the ridiculous. There is no such thing, for Aristotle, as uplifting or beautiful comedy.

Still, according to an interpretation of the Poetics offered by Masahiro Kitano, comedy has a role in ethics and in the improvement of character:”This middle is achieved through catharsis as purgation of the comic emotion. Nicomachean Ethics cites two types of ice concerning the ridiculous. Buffoons, ‘who itch to have their joke at all costs, and are more concerned to raise a laugh than to keep within the bounds of decorum and avoid giving pain to the object of their raillery’ (1128a6-7), go to excess in ridicule and the boorish and morose, ‘who never by any chance say anything funny themselves and take offence at those who do’ (28a7-9), are deficient in this respect. The ‘middle’ between these two excesses is the witty or versatile, ‘who jest with good taste’ (28a9-10). This middle is explained, for example, as the person who will say and allow others to say to him ‘only the sort of things that are suitable to a virtuous man and a gentleman.’ Comedy, by purging and relieving the comic laughter, will serve as a means to the achievement of the middle concerning the ridiculous.”