Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 817
THE COURT. The objection is sustained: Are you a tainted wether? Are you pleading imbecility? ANTONIO. No.
THE COURT. Ha. I thought we should get to that. Strike out the words ‘tainted wether.’ Will you please prepare your bosom for the knife. What have you to say?
ANTONIO. But little. Give me your hand, Bassanio; commend me to your wife, tell her —
STATE ATTORNEY. I object. What he tells Bassanio’s wife is not evidence.
THE COURT. Objection sustained. Strike out the words to your wife. Is there a balance here to weigh the flesh?
SHYLOCK. I have them ready.
THE COURT. Answer the question, please, yes or no, are there balances here to weigh the flesh? SHYLOCK. Yes.
THE COURT. Ha! I thought we should get to that. Go ahead.
PORTIA. I beg to enter a demurrer. THE COURT. On what grounds?
PORTIA. He may take a pound of flesh but not any more or any less.... Nay, if the scale do turn but in the estimation of a hair, thou diest....
THE COURT (interrupting). Address the Court, please, not the Jew.
PORTIA.... not less nor more than just a pound of flesh....
GRATIANO (from the body of the Court). A second Daniel! A Daniel come to judgment! Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip.
THE COURT. Who is that? STATE ATTORNEY. Gratiano, my lord. THE COURT. Three days in jail. Go on with the case. PORTIA.... if it be so much as makes it light or heavy in the twentieth part of one poor scruple....
STATE ATTORNEY (rising). I object. He must not take more than a pound, but he may take less if he wishes. Your lordship will recognize this as a familiar principle in the satisfaction of a contract.
THE COURT. The objection is quite correct; there is no doubt of the law. Shylock, will you take less? Will you take half a pound?
SHYLOCK. I am content.
THE COURT. Answer the question, please, yes or no, will you take half a pound?
SHYLOCK. Yes.
THE COURT. I thought we should get to that. The Court awards half a pound of flesh. The case is closed.
EVENING NEWSPAPER REPORT. Meat case settled. Court awards half a pound damages.
It is evident that with a lead like this we might ring any number of changes on the famous court scene. It might occur to us that it could be matched against one of those sensational trials at the Old Bailey in London to which the world of fashion flocks. They are written up with some such gushing opening as the following:
The Central Criminal Court, popularly known as the Old Bailey, never witnessed a more imposing or more fashionable assembly than that which gathered yesterday for the sensational case of Rex v. Ricks. The court was a scene of brilliant light and colour. The scarlet and ermine robes of the Lord Chief Justice on the bench were matched by the brilliant costume, the flowing silks and flashing jewels of the leaders of the fashionable world. Among them we noticed the Dowager Lady Neverdeigh, Lady Simp, etc etc.
Here, then, would bè a fitting ‘exercise’ in the practice of humour, to write and complete such an account as applied to the Doge’s court in Venice. Anyone with a sense of humour and a knowledge of the Merchant of Venice can see, or rather, feel the effect that is wanted. The only difficulty is to produce it. That is where the difference comes in as between a trained humorist, and an untrained humorist. The person without training can appreciate the thing when done, can even make a try at doing it, but is not likely to do it properly, or do it at all without real work and experience. Give a lead to a practised humorist and he can do the rest. For example, Mr. A. P. Herbert, in one of his fighter articles, strikes the following glorious idea. A visitor is being shown round a garden and is being bored, as we all have been, by the infernal Latin names of the flowers as used by his pedantic, botanical host. So he goes his host one better, by bursting out into ecstatic terms which certainly seem Latin and sound like gardening but somehow don’t seem to fit.
Thus:
Ha! Is that ranunculus! And say — jour scrofula is wonderful!
Now that is all the lead needed by a fellow humorist (in so far as Mr. A. P. Herbert has any fellows). He would be able to go on with it. So the humble student might sit down, pen in hand, and make a list of flowers that are not flowers. Let us try:
Elephantiasis — no, that’s too obvious.
Flox — no, by Jove, that is a flower, etc etc.... Try it out.
Take this similar case. Harry Graham (of the Ruthless Rhymes’) made one day the startling discovery that for many of our words half of them is just as significant, as ‘signif,’ as the whole of them. Why say ‘political economy’ when ‘pol econ.’ will do? Why write ‘Hamlet by Shakespeare,’ instead of just ‘Ham by Shakes.’ Hence Harry Graham was able with characteristic generosity to give this discovery to the world:
‘I gladly publish to the pop
A scheme of which I make no myst,
And beg my fellow scribes to cop
This labour-saving syst.’
Give that to any trained humorist and he will spin it on as fast and as far as you like. So can you with practice, so can you not without.
All of this, let us remind ourselves, is only in the field of verbal humour, incongruities of language and not on the higher ground of the humour of character and of life.
But dexterity with words, even as words, contributes presently to felicity of expression. Yet we must be warned here to leave aside as an exception the punster, who never gets beyond words, a case of arrested development....
We have spoken of burlesque and comic writing as belonging on lower ground than the humour of sustained narrative dealing with character and life. This is undoubtedly true. But we must remember that even from a lower ground a higher altitude may be reached. Burlesque writing at its best is a fine achievement. Nor need any writer be ashamed of it nor be misled into believing that he wastes his talents in devoting himself to it. If he has the peculiar talent he can find no better life work than that of a ‘funny’ writer. It is probable that such people, more than any other writers, have brought temporary solace to weary humanity, have coaxed laughter out of sorrow and brought to those distressed the respite of forgetfulness. If you are funny keep funny even if it makes you sad.
We pass from burlesque and comic writing to the sustained humour of stories. We are no longer talking of the explosive funny stories discussed above but of those on an extended scale. They differ from burlesque in that they are studies of real life or life that could be real if the writer knows how to make it so. Underlying such stories is a sort of plot turning on some contrivance that makes for incongruity. The most time-worn of all such plots is that of discomfiture, misadventure to people for whom, in a small way and not as grand tragedy, everything goes wrong. Such stories have filtered down from the Middle Ages and stand out in such classic examples as the misadventures of John Gilpin. They have long since worn thin. The present rising generation would rather have stories of supermen than of simps, would sooner read, or see or hear, of the cleverness of a crook or the triumph of a detective than of the blunders of a bashful man. This is really, as one might say, going back to Jack the Giant Killer, and so it may be that the rising generation is sinking.
A more popular and lasting basis of a humorous story is the theme of mistaken identity. Mr. Jones is mistaken for Mr. Brown, whereupon all things may happen. This is especially the case if the two people confused are really of utterly different categories — if an Egyptologist is mistaken for a plumber or a bishop gets mixed up with a janitor, or a lunatic at large is mistaken for all sorts of people.
Now the writing of such stories of a humorous type is much the same thing, in point of technique, as writing stories of a serious type. They need the same art of narration and power of expression, except perhaps that this need is greater. Stories of adventure and danger, if sufficiently exciting, can be pretty crude in the telling; indeed most of them are. But stories that are to amuse must move with a surer foot: danger moves fast over bad ground: humour can’t.
But even at that there are certain peculiar points of construction that are interesting to consider. One which occurs and recurs concerns the question how much should the reader know. To what extent do you keep him in the dark, so that when you let him into the light he gets a bigger dazzle. There was a once-famous English writer, now mostly forgotten, called Anthony Trollope, who never cared to put a story together without the reader knowing all about it from the start. If the squire was going to be ruined, or the squire’s daughter to run away with the coachman, Trollope whispered it first to the reader and then they had the fun together of watching the squire. Writers of our own day, on the other hand, are apt to be the other way. They hate to tell the reader anything till the last chapter.
Observe first the way in which this applies to crime stories. Critics and analysts show us that a crime story may be told with a concealment from the reader as to who committed the crime and how, in which case the reader, still mystified, follows step by step the work of the sleuth. The story may also be told with a complete knowledge given to the reader as to who killed who and how — in fact he sees it all done. In this last case the reader sits tight and watches the mystified sleuth. Dr. Austin Freeman (better known as Dr. John Thorndyke) calls these two methods ‘direct’ and ‘inverted.’ In a preface to his Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke he explains how, many years ago, he pondered over the problem of the inverted story. If the reader ‘was made an actual witness of the crime and furnished with every fact that could possibly be used in its detection, would there be any story left to tell?’ Dr. Freeman in his experiments abundantly proved that there is.
The same problem arises in connection with humorous stories of the kind that turn on a dénouement or final outcome which contains all the fun. Generally speaking, to give away the dénouement spoils the story: indeed this, as already seen, is one of the elementary blunders of the incompetent story-teller. But cases arise where an advanced knowledge of what is finally to happen enables the reader to enjoy the fun all through, instead of waiting, mystified, until the end. Sometimes indeed it is a nice problem in technique, exactly like that of Dr. Freeman, whether to tell the story forward or backward, straight on to the end, or making the end known at the start. Here is an example in the story that was originally told by Sir Henry Lucy, Punch’s famous contributor, about his genial friend Canon Ainger. I and others have repeated it so often that it must be as widely known as it is widely vouched for. But we are talking of it not as novelty but as technique. Here is the story told front first with the end concealed:
One evening Canon Ainger arrived at a fashionable Condon house, and as he laid aside his outer things he said to the maid, ‘Are they in there?’ pointing to the drawing-room. The maid didn’t know who he was but as there was a large dinner party just gone from dinner into the drawing-room, she merely answered, ‘Yes, sir.’... ‘Very good,’ said the canon, ‘now please don’t announce me.’... Then he got down on all fours.... ‘Now please help me to pull this bear-skin rug over myself... that’s right — now,’ continued the canon in a whisper, ‘push the door a little bit open and I’ll crawl in.’... In he crawled on all fours, barking out ‘Wow-wow!!’ as he came in. The rug was over his eyes, and he couldn’t see that this was not the children’s party to which he had been invited.
Now try it the other way:
Canon Ainger was very fond of children, loved to romp with them and used to turn up unexpectedly at children’s parties, crawling in with a floor rug over his shoulders to look like a bear. One evening he arrived at what was the wrong house. What was going on was not a children’s party but a dinner-party and the host and the guests had just finished dinner and gone into the drawing-room. The canon arrived, all mystery and smiles. ‘Where are they?’ he whispered behind his hand mysteriously to the housemaid. ‘In there, sir,’ she answered. ‘Hush!’ he said, with his hands on his lips.... ‘Don’t announce me! I’m a bear.’...’A what!’ said the alarmed maid.... ‘A grisgly bear,’ said the canon, and added a growl to it... ‘Now give me the rug...’ etc.
From that last point the story runs as before.
Now this question of the relation of the outcome of a story to the telling of a story is a most important consideration in the field of humour. The contrast, as explained in the preceding chapter, is as between humour that runs to a final climax, or dénouement, and humour that reaches no such point but depends for its appeal on being humorous all through. This climax at the end of a story, the point that makes the story, is sometimes called the ‘nub.’ It’s a stupid term, but let it pass for want of a better. As has been discussed above, in a short and simple funny story nothing more than a ‘nub’ is needed. A man can be ‘put off at Buffalo’ amid roars of laughter from listeners, or readers, who never cracked a smile when he got on the train and went to his bunk.
But for any sustained narrative a ‘nub’ alone won’t do. No matter how ingenious the ending, how complete the surprise, it is not fair to ask the reader to wade through uninteresting pages to get to it. In fact he won’t wade. He’ll sink. This is what is the matter with ever so many humorous narratives — nothing to them till the end. Oddly enough, however, at times a humorous story makes a great hit, in spite of this general principle, on its ‘nub’ alone. This is the case of the most historically famous of all Mark Twain’s short stories, The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It was the publication of this story which introduced him to the East. Yet for many people (I am one) it is hopelessly tiresome. It depends for its humour on the idea that a man called Smiley had a frog that could out-jump any other frog: another man challenged Smiley (or his frog, or both of them) and secretly filled Smiley’s frog with shot. When the trial jump came Smiley’s frog sat immovable, shrugging its shoulders like a Frenchman. Now that’s all right as a funny idea, but it can’t carry the long introduction hitched on to it. Even if the description of Smiley, as willing to bet on anything, is amusing, there’s too much of it.... Other people may think differently. Mark Twain himself thought very little of the Jumping Frog till the world insisted that it was very funny.
It is obvious that the thing most to be desired is to write a story that comes to a final climax or nub at the very end, but which is of such a nature that it is more or less ‘funny’ from the start and not wearisome to listen to. I submit as an example a story entitled My Short Theatrical Career, and I fully admit that I wrote it myself although it does not appear in any of my books. Those who know the difficulties that surround quoting other people’s stories — question of copyright, of quoting too much or too little and so on, of offending friends and alienating enemies — will understand how simple and pleasant it is for a writer to quote from his own. In any case I greatly admire the way this story is written. I call the reader’s attention, in case he forgets to do so himself, to the style of it, the peculiar measure of the sentences — nothing too much, nothing too little. This makes it carry a singular air of plain fact, of being entirely true — which it happens to be, syllable for syllable.
My Short Theatrical Career
When I was young I had a great fear of doing anything in public and took care never to try to. But through this there came an incident that was very humiliating and made me want to improve.
It was like this. I had saved up money for a trip to England, and went over in 1893 on the Laurentian, an old-fashioned steamer out of Montreal. There were only nineteen passengers. The rest were cattle.
Then one night they got up an impromptu ship’s concert in aid of the Sailors’ Home. The chairman announced from the platform that everybody would be asked to do something, and so I thought out some funny remarks about sailors.
But when it came my turn I forgot to say that the remarks were to be funny. Later on, when I became a humorous lecturer, I found that if you are going to be funny you must always say so. But these people couldn’t know.
So my talk about sailors, or rather my whisper about sailors, was so agonised that it didn’t sound funny. It was just insulting. It collapsed in failure, and I can feel the humiliation of it just as keenly now, forty-nine years after, as I did then.
So I realised that I must not be again caught unprepared in case I was asked to do something before people. I had in my mind, of course, that there would be a ship’s concert coming back.
So in London I bought a book of recitations. I think it was Mrs. Palmer’s Recitations: I’ll admit I know it was.
I selected a poem called ‘Lasca,’ all about Texas, down by the Rio Grande. It begins:
I want free life, and I want fresh air;
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle.
I learned it all through, and I kept saying it over, so as to keep my hold on it. I said it over in Westminster Abbey and in the Tower of London. If any of the people I had letters to asked me to their houses, I kept repeating it in the cab, just in case they asked for a recitation:
I want free life, and I want fresh air.
But chiefly, of course, I was thinking of the ship’s concert.
I took my passage to New York in the City of Paris. This was a very grand boat with two hundred saloon passengers and all the luxury of the day. There were many celebrated people, Mrs. Annie Besant, the theosophist, and a lot of musical and theatrical stars. At the time they seemed tremendous people to me, though now, no doubt, they would just seem nobody, as everybody does to anybody who is seventy-two.
I knew there was going to be a ship’s concert because that was the first question I asked the bedroom steward. ‘Oh yes, sir,’ he answered, ‘always, sir, the last night out; for us sailors, sir.’ So I said ‘Thankyou’ and gave him another fifty cents.
Then I went out on deck and said:
I want free life, and I want fresh air;
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle.
