fuse to be moved by
imaginary woes. The person is hateful who cannot shed an honest, if
furtive, tear at a finely conceived and executed pathetic incident in a
play, and the more if he is proud of his insensibility or lack of
imagination; and we love an honest fellow who, like Jules Janin, wept
"_comme un veau_" during _La Dame aux Camellias_. Such insensible
creatures resemble "the man that hath no music in himself." Sometimes
their conduct is so severely resented by audible protest that they are
shamed into restraint.

It seems quite a long time since we have had a genuine debauch of hearty
laughter in the theatre, of "Laughter holding both his sides." There has
been a great deal of laughter, but it must be remembered that there are
several kinds of laughter. So much difference exists between one species
of laughter and another that the close observer can guess from the
nature of the laughter in the theatre what is the sort of piece which
provokes it.

No doubt the subject of laughter is one of great difficulty. On the
point one may quote a passage from Darwin: "Many curious discussions
have been written on the causes of laughter with grown-up persons. The
subject is extremely complex ... laughter seems primarily to be the
expression of mere joy or happiness. The laughter of the gods is
described by Homer as 'the exuberance of their celestial joy after their
daily banquet.'" This, perhaps, hardly agrees with the popular idea of
the term "Homeric laughter."

It may be that in the phrases of Darwin one sees a key to the difference
between the laughter at witty dialogue and the laughter caused by comic
situation, the former being an expression of intellectual amusement, not
necessarily accompanied by "mere joy or happiness," whilst the latter is
to a great extent the outcome of simple, non-intellectual human
pleasure. In the case of a witty comedy one hears ripples of laughter
rather than waves, and they have no cumulative effect, one may even
laugh during a great part of the evening without reaching that agony of
laughter which comes from an intensely funny situation--in fact, each
laugh at dialogue is to some extent independent of the others. In the
case of a funny situation there is a crescendo, and sometimes each
outburst of laughter begins at the highest point reached by the outburst
before it, till an intense pitch is attained; and, in fact, there is
really no complete subsidence at all till the top of the clima