The range of comedy is more embracing than the range of tragedy; and if tragedy occurs at some middle point in ethical life where failure is weighed against man’s nobility of spirit, comedy ventures out into the farther extremes of experience in both directions, toward the bestial or “obscene,” and at the other end of the spectrum toward the insane heroics of Nietzsche or the vision of Prospero, who sees sin as the last mistake of all our many mistakes, dispelled before our clearer reason whenever hate seems more absurd than charity.
ATTRIBUTION:
Wylie Sypher (b. 1905), U.S. critic, educator. “The Meanings of Comedy,” Comedy, Johns Hopkins University Press (1956).
