DELIMITACIÓN CONCEPTUAL DEL GRUPO DESDE LA PERSPECTIVA PSICOSOCIAL

In London, you had another influence. The Renaissance brought about a rise in attendance at the university.

You had what was called in England the “University Wits.” These were people who were writing epigrams and witticisms and poems and so you had plays based in part on wordplay.

What follows is a page from Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

FALSTAFF: By the Lord, thou sayest true, lad. And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

PRINCE HENRY: As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

FALSTAFF: How now, how now, mad wag! what, in thy quips and thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

PRINCE HENRY: Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?

FALSTAFF: Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft.

PRINCE HENRY: Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

FALSTAFF: No; I’ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

Have you ever gone to a Shakespearean play and the only people laughing at the wordplay are the actors on the stage? But Shakespeare’s plays also included uproarious clown work, like Launcelot Gobbo and his farting dog in The Merchant of Venice. The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew still convulse audiences around the world with characters that come directly from Commedia. Shakespeare’s plays show the influence from two very different schools. He was obviously influenced by the University Wits, but Shakespeare was also greatly affected by the clowning of Commedia. Italian actors had come over to London, but they didn’t speak English and the English audiences didn’t speak Italian, so they were called Italian Nights. They did all their scenarios in mime and pantomime, even though in Italy these scenarios were very verbal. These pantomimed performances became such a popular tradition that they

became integrated into British culture and are now known as the Christmas Pantos. Charles Chaplin learned his craft in Karno’s Pantomime Company. So, whenever you see an early Chaplin silent, you’re seeing the best representation of a Harlequin that we have, because it comes right from Commedia.

A little while after Shakespeare, in the mid-17th century, there was an actor in France named Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. He was a good actor, but a terrible business man. His theater went broke, and so he Shakespeare had championed iambic pentameter, lines in five meters — babump, babump, babump, babump, babump. But the French decreed that they were better than the English, and so all writers had to use Alexandrine verse — iambic hexameter, lines with six meters: babump, babump, babump, babump, babump BAPUMP! You can see how that was so much better than Shakespeare.

So everyone had to write using Alexandrine verse. Everyone, that is, except for Molière, who began to replace long speeches with the way people talked in life, such as this scene from The School for Wives.

The School for Wives has a great premise — a man, Arnolphe, is so afraid of being cuckolded that he decides the only way he can be married is to raise a girl from an early age to be the stupidest woman in

AGNES My — ARNOLPHE Well?!

AGNES

I am afraid you may be angry with me.

ARNOLPHE No.

AGNES Yes you will.

ARNOLPHE No, no!

AGNES

Then give me your word.

ARNOLPHE All right, then.

AGNES

Well he took my — you’ll be mad!

ARNOLPHE No.

AGNES Yes.

ARNOLPHE

No, no! What’s all the mystery?

What did he take?

AGNES Well, he—

ARNOLPHE (Aside.) God, how I suffer!

AGNES

He took my ribbon, the ribbon that you gave me, To tell you the actual truth, I couldn’t stop him.

ARNOLPHE

Well, let the ribbon go. But I want to know if he did Nothing to you but kiss your arms?

AGNES

Why? Do people do other things?

ARNOLPHE (Quickly.) No, not at all!

It’s been said that Molière saved comedy from wit. He wrote the way people talked. Look at this dialogue. He used short, incomplete sentences, but patterned after the way people speak, not witticisms.

Practically David Mamet. There’s a scene in The School for Wives in which Arnolphe tells his two servants to not open the door for anyone, no matter what. In a following scene he returns, but the servants won’t open the door! Of course not — if his whole idea is to raise the stupidest women in France, what kind of servants would he have? Stupid ones — and, by the way, both fat. When they won’t open up he tells them that whoever doesn’t open the gate won’t eat for a week. So they both rush out and you have these two fat servants trying to squeeze through this skinny door and there’s this page of Alexandrian verse where the servants go “Oh!” “Ow!” “No!” “Wait!” “Stop!”

Molière saved comedy from wit. He saved comedy from cleverness using Commedia scenarios, using archetypal characters. He allowed people to talk the way they talked as opposed to trying to always write wordplay epigrams. And our contemporary comedy has developed from the actor-centered theater of Commedia and Molière. You can see the influence in everything from Vaudeville and Music Hall to The Big Bang Theory, Funny or Die, and When Harry Met Sally.

1 or maybe Abraham was just off his meds, I’m not sure.

CHAPTER 13