it contains. In the end it renders comic any mishap that befalls one through one's own fault, no matter what the fault or mishap may be,—nay, an allusion to this mishap, a single word that recalls it, is sufficient. There would be nothing amusing in the saying, "It serves you right, George Dandin," were it not for the comic overtones that take up and re-echo it.
3. We have dwelt at considerable length on repetition and inversion; we now come to the reciprocal interference[1] of series. This is a comic effect, the precise formula of which is very difficult to disentangle, by reason of the extraordinary variety of forms in which it appears on the stage. Perhaps it might be defined as follows: A situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time.
You will at once think of an equivocal situation. And the equivocal situation is indeed one which permits of two different
- ↑ The word "interference" has here the meaning given to it in Optics, where it indicates the partial superposition and neutralisation, by each other, of two series of light-waves.
