Page:Chesterton - Twelve Types (Humphreys, 1902).djvu/99

Rh speech misrepresents the soul. Monsieur Rostand showed even more than his usual insight when he called 'Cyrano de Bergerac' a comedy, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it ends with disappointment and death. The essence of tragedy is a spiritual breakdown or decline, and in the great French play the spiritual sentiment mounts unceasingly until the last line. It is not the facts themselves, but our feeling about them, that makes tragedy and comedy, and death is more joyful in Rostand than life in Maeterlinck. The same apparent contradiction holds good in the case of the drama of 'L'Aiglon', now being performed with so much success. Although the hero is a weakling, the subject a fiasco, the end a premature death and a personal disillusion-