4 P. H. Frye 
edy upon the same general basis, the appreciation of incongruity, 
as that upon which it has become usual to rest comedy. And yet 
it has been observed again and again that as far as the mere dra- 
matic substratum is concerned, there is no essential difference be- 
tween tragedy and comedy: the same premises may serve for 
either according to circumstances. As Vinet, for one, has pointed 
out, the subject of Mithridate is identical with that of ’Avare— 
the fifth scene of the third act in the former play utilizing exactly 
the same situation as the third scene of the fourth act in the latter ; 
while between Mahomet and Tartufe, and Andromache and Rico- 
chets, to mention only obvious instances, there is an unmistakable 
likeness of the same kind. And yet how different the effect! 
The truth is, incongruity may stir very different emotions under 
different circumstances. 
In the case of comedy it is the sense of decorum and conven- 
tion, rather than any graver feeling, which is offended. A viola- 
tion of the proprieties, an inconsistency of character, a contrariety 
of circumstances—of such is the fabric of comedy. In spite of its 
tragic possibilities the Misanthrope arouses, as a matter of fact, 
no profound distrust, it stirs no serious misgivings. That a prig 
of Alceste’s stamp should so far belie his professions as to fall in 
love with a trifling flirt like Céleméne, arouses much the same 
feeling, under Moliére’s management, as that a man in irreproach- 
able evening clothes, to borrow an example from Professor Sully, 
should slip and fall into the mud. To the intelligent observer the 
one experience is, of course, much more interesting than the other. 
The latter is wholly superficial and fortuitous. The former is 
rooted in human nature and furnishes a better pasturage for that 
sort of intellectual curiosity and amusement which it is the busi- 
ness of the comic poet to elicit from his themes as it is the business 
of the tragic poet to elicit from his the motifs proper to his own 
genre. 
In the case of tragedy, on the contrary, the incongruity is such 
as to shock profoundly the moral prepossessions of the race—to 
shake, if not to unsettle, confidence in the moral order, in the 
moral reality of the universe. The sacrifice of a girl so innocent 
and ingenuous as Iphigenia to the indirections of her father’s am- 
302 
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