SOURCE: Teele, Roy E. “Comic Noh Essential in the Noh Theater.” Literature East and West 11, no. 4 (December 1967): 350-60.

In the following essay, Teele argues against critics who have claimed that comic Noh plays have no literary or dramatic value. By examining an ideal program, studying Zeami's remarks, and comparing them to comedies of other traditions, he shows how they have great value and are an essential part of the “one world” of Noh theatre.

Even a foreigner attending noh plays for the first time can easily feel the change in atmosphere in the theater as the lyric noh ends and the comic noh is about to begin. At last the libretto, which virtually everyone seems to be holding and constantly consulting, is laid aside, and the theater-goer ceases to be a student primarily concerned with the printed lines. Freed from the fascination of print he can undergo the...