Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/92

 *spoken prisoner entirely innocent of malapropisms that he had ever faced. He cannot compose his shallow fluster; for it is as deep as he is, and it even comes splashing into the pathos of the moment when the wrong done to Hero is discovered, who is not yet known to be still living. He wants the man punished who called him ass, not the man who was the slanderer of Hero. Standing round him are noble natures touched with sorrow and remorse; but for him Conrade is "the plaintiff, the offender," who did call him ass. Dead, shamed, ruined Hero, distracted lover, and tender father, retreat into a background upon which he scrawls himself an ass. For the ocean cannot be accommodated in a saucer, and some men should beware lest the spatter of a tear swamp and drown them. Here the comedy of Dogberry's character acquires a touch of humor; for so are we obliged to tolerate in our profoundest moments the trivialities of those who do not know or cannot contain our serious mood.

There is underlying humor in the fact that all this ignorance and inconsequence, this burlesquing of the detective's business, effects what the age and wisdom of Leonato, and the instinct of the lover Claudio, could not; namely, the discovery of Hero's innocence and of the plot to besmirch her chastity in the eyes of her lover. The wise men are taken in and the accident of folly undeceives them. Then it becomes no longer an accident, but the regimen of the world adopts and puts it to a use. Here comedy becomes humorous, because it is shown how the fortunes of the good and prudent are