that Horace gets all the benefit of Arnolphe’s precautionary measures.  There is the same symmetrical repetition in the Ecole des marts, in L’Etourdi, and above all in George Dandin, where the same effect in three tempi is again met with:  first tempo, George Dandin discovers that his wife is unfaithful; second tempo, he summons his father—­ and mother-in-law to his assistance; third tempo, it is George Dandin himself, after all, who has to apologise.

At times the same scene is reproduced with groups of different characters.  Then it not infrequently happens that the first group consists of masters and the second of servants.  The latter repeat in another key a scene already played by the former, though the rendering is naturally less refined.  A part of the Depit amoureux is constructed on this plan, as is also Amphitryon.  In an amusing little comedy of Benedix, Der Eigensinn, the order is inverted:  we have the masters reproducing a scene of stubbornness in which their servants have set the example.

But, quite irrespective of the characters who serve as pegs for the arrangement of symmetrical situations, there seems to be a wide gulf between classic comedy and the theatre of to-day.  Both aim at introducing a certain mathematical order into events, while none the less maintaining their aspect of likelihood, that is to say, of life.  But the means they employ are different.  The majority of light comedies of our day seek to mesmerise directly the mind of the spectator.  For, however extraordinary the coincidence, it becomes acceptable from the very fact that it is accepted; and we do accept it, if we have been gradually prepared for its reception.  Such is often the procedure adopted by contemporary authors.  In Moliere’s plays, on the contrary, it is the moods of the persons on the stage, not of the audience, that make repetition seem natural.  Each of the characters represents a certain force applied in a certain direction, and it is because these forces, constant in direction, necessarily combine together in the same way, that the same situation is reproduced.  Thus interpreted, the comedy of situation is akin to the comedy of character.  It deserves to be called classic, if classic art is indeed that which does not claim to derive from the effect more than it has put into the cause.

2.  Inversion.—­This second method has so much analogy with the first that we will merely define it without insisting on illustrations.  Picture to yourself certain characters in a certain situation:  if you reverse the situation and invert the roles, you obtain a comic scene.  The double rescue scene in Le Voyage de M. Perrichon belongs to this class. [Footnote:  Labiche, “Le Voyage de M. Perrichon.”] There is no necessity, however, for both the identical scenes to be played before us.  We may be shown only one, provided the other is really in our minds.  Thus, we laugh at the prisoner at the bar lecturing the magistrate; at a