ke repetition seem natural. Each of the characters represents a
certain force applied in a certain direction, and it is because these
forces, constant in direction, necessarily combine together in the same
way, that the same situation is reproduced. Thus interpreted, the
comedy of situation is akin to the comedy of character. It deserves to
be called classic, if classic art is indeed that which does not claim
to derive from the effect more than it has put into the cause.

2. Inversion.--This second method has so much analogy with the first
that we will merely define it without insisting on illustrations.
Picture to yourself certain characters in a certain situation: if you
reverse the situation and invert the roles, you obtain a comic scene.
The double rescue scene in Le Voyage de M. Perrichon belongs to this
class. [Footnote: Labiche, "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon."] There is no
necessity, however, for both the identical scenes to be played before
us. We may be shown only one, provided the other is really in our
minds. Thus, we laugh at the prisoner at the bar lecturing the
magistrate; at a child presuming to teach its parents; in a word, at
everything that comes under the heading of "topsyturvydom." Not
infrequently comedy sets before us a character who lays a trap in which
he is the first to be caught. The plot of the villain who is the victim
of his own villainy, or the cheat cheated, forms the stock-in-trade of
a good many plays. We find this even in primitive farce. Lawyer
Pathelin tells his client of a trick to outwit the magistrate; the
client employs the self-same trick to avoid paying the lawyer. A
termagant of a wife insists upon her husband doing all the housework;
she has put down each separate item on a "rota." Now let her fall into
a copper, her husband will refuse to drag her out, for "that is not
down on his 'rota.'" In modern literature we meet with hundreds of
variations on the theme of the robber robbed. In every case the root
idea involves an inversion of roles, and a situation which recoils on
the head of its author.

Here we apparently find the confirmation of a law, some illustrations
of which we have already pointed out. When a comic scene has been
reproduced a number of times, it reaches the stage of being a classical
type or model. It becomes amusing in itself, quite apart from the
causes which render it amusing. Henceforth, new scenes, which are not
comic de jure, may become amusing de facto, o