cannot do so. The
tastes of the crowd are manifested in them. We read the great dramas
which have become a part of the world literature, and we form from them
our ideas of the current intellectual interest of the time of their
origin and of the society in which they were produced. Such inferences
need to be corrected. They are certainly erroneous. The Greeks were not
all of them, nor any of them all the time, on a plane of classical
severity and correctness. Far from it. They were realistic, egoistic,
cold, cruel, and fond of sensual pleasure.[2025] The great dramas,
epics, etc., were enjoyed only by the real upper strata of the society,
just as is the case in regard to Shakespeare amongst us. The great
populace of no society has ever found its amusement in purely
intellectual suggestions. With us popular amusement is found in the
circus, negro minstrels, the variety show, opera bouffe, the spectacle,
and ballet, and it attaches to parody and burlesque, "knock-down
business," buffoonery, and broad allusion. Stupidity is always funny.
Everything which breaks over the social taboo is funny. A violation of
propriety, accidental disorder of the dress, grotesque postures, vulgar
gestures of derision or defiance, blows, painful accidents and
mishaps,--if not too serious,--deformations of the body (humpbacks),
epithets and nicknames, slang and other abuses of language (like
mispronunciation by foreigners), vituperation, caricature and burlesque
of respectable types like the pedant, dandy, Puritan, imbecile, or the
rich and great, always raise a laugh in the crowd and are relished by
the crowd. They are constant elements of farce and fun. They have been
so for three thousand years. Jugglery and feats of strength and skill
excite wonder until they become familiar. They are proofs of individual
capacity. They do not give amusement like the points which have just
been mentioned and which have been repeated to generation after
generation. The crowd always delights in any degradation of the things
which the selected classes prefer and try to impose on all. They rejoice
to see the restrictions trampled upon which they hear preached as the
rules of life. In opera bouffe classical heroes, gods of the classical
mythology, royalty, nobles of the mediaeval type, feudalism, dominies,
are turned to ridicule. The crowd worships its heroes fanatically while
they are in fashion, but it likes to turn about and roll them in the mud
of satire, in