It seems to follow that the laughter excited in spectator or reader by a display of wit is slightly complex. It has in it something of the child’s laughter of admiration at what is new, rather startling, and fine, of his gay response to a play-challenge, and of a sympathetic rejoicing with the combatant who, by showing his skill, obtains an advantage over his antagonist. The dialogue of comedy and of the fiction which adopts the comic point of view will make use of these verbal sports, these doublings of the intellectual chase, at the hint of ambiguous language. They are refreshing, they enlarge the scope of the witty combat, and they help to maintain the mirthful temper of the spectator. Their use may be {357} illustrated throughout the history of comedy. Thus, we find in the comedy of Aristophanes much chaffing of the sexes and punning. The same is true of Plautus. In the merry comedy of Shakespeare we have still an abundance of puns, also a great advance in the art of the verbal foils, especially as crossed by man and woman, more particularly on the side of the latter. Molière’s quieter and more thoughtful discourse, though now and then it finds room for a pun, illustrates the finer art of witty combat, in which the foils seem to have been tipped with a softer button. We have so far dwelt on those elements of comedy which seem plainly derivable from simple forms of fun, as seen in child’s play and the laughter of primitive folk. There remains what is in some ways the most interesting feature, the comic presentation of character in action and speech. It is customary to classify comedies into those of Incident, of Manners and of Character. Such a division must not, however, mislead us. The three ingredients are present in every comedy. If Aristophanes depends largely on incident, he only gets his fun by choosing comic characters—the sophist, say, or the commercial explorer endowed with wings. In the so-called comedy of Manners of Congreve and his school, the persons, such as they are, undoubtedly form a main support of the entertaining action. Molière, though he relies chiefly on character, can only give us comedy by inventing situations in which his figures will have flashed on them the droll light of the comic stage. What is meant by the above classification is pretty plainly that in some comedies the characters are more central, are more finely evolved, and attract a much larger attention. That the evolution of comedy has, in the main, been an advance in the presentment of character, as judged {358} both by the variety and the complexity of the personalities depicted, and by the fulness and definiteness of the presentation, is just what we might have expected. It seems certain that, with the progress of civilisation, men and women have grown more complex and more varied, both intellectually and morally, and further that the interest in character and the capability of understanding it have developed concurrently.