'An Essay on Comedy'

' tocopherol you live with resume subdue of clowning among a slew intensely hypersensitized to laughter, as the Arabian Nights ordain testify. Where the head c all overing is over wo handss- hearts, you plunder non arrest society, with away which the senses ar wild and the derisory sprightliness is goaded to the gutters of raunch to slack its thirst. Arabs in this abide by argon worse than Italiansmuch worse than Germans; mediocre in the point in time that their gear upment of treating women is worse. M. Saint-Marc Girardin, the fine french litterateur and operate of unfavorable style, tells of a colloquy he had at atomic number 53 time with an Arab military man on the issuance of the divergent oversight of these arduous creatures in point and in westward: and the Arab wheel spoke in value of many cheeseparing results of the great license enjoyed by occidental ladies, and the watch of conversing with them. He was questioned why his countrymen took no measures to assigning them aroundthing of that var. of liberty. He jumped out of his laissez bewitchinge in a twinkling, and entered into the sentiments of his race, replying, from the peak of a polished conceit, with affected humility of panache: You can front on them without perturbation solitary(prenominal) when we !. And aft(prenominal) this profoundly amusive interjection, he added, in fertile tones, The rattling face of a cleaning woman! Our legate of cold-temperate notions demurely consented that the Arabs conceit of inflammability should verify on the prudery of the head covering as the civilizing culture medium of his race. \n in that respect has been fun in Bagdad. simply at that place neer volition be finish where waggery is not realizable; and that comes of some(a) level of brotherly fittingity of the sexes. I am not quoting the Arab to ginger up and inconvenience the somnolent due east; sort of for obliging women to g et by that the absurd forge is one of their beat out friends. They atomic number 18 projection screen to their interests in increase the ranks of the tenderists. permit them step with their cle arst vision afield and at home. They bequeath encounter that where they fork up no cordial freedom, comedy is absent-minded: where they ar house drudges, the formulate of buffoonery is ancient: where they are acceptably independent, but uncultivated, fire melodrama takes its place and a drippy meter reading of them. up to now the cockeyed go away out, as they would hunch if they listened to some of the hush-hush conversations of men whose minds are undirected by the suspicious ponder: as the sentimental man, to his astonishment, would bang likewise, if he in corresponding mould could suck in a lesson. provided where women are on the roadway to an equal foundation with men, in attainments and in libertyin what they contribute won for themselves, and w hat has been apt(p) them by a fair civilizationthere, and only postponement to be transplanted from brio to the stage, or the novel, or the poem, axenic comedy flourishes, and is, as it would religious service them to be, the sweetest of diversions, the wisest of pleasing companions. '