In one of Bronson Howard’s plays, a man the police are after conspires with his comrades to get him safely through the cordon of guards by pretending that he is dead.  They carry him out, his face covered with a cloth.  A policeman halts them—­not a word is spoken—­and the policeman turns down the cover from the face.  Dramatic as this all is, charged as it is with meaning to the man there on the stretcher and to his comrades, there is even more portentous meaning in the facial expression of the policeman as he reverently removes his helmet and motions the bearers to go on—­the man has really died.

The movements are as simple and unagitated as one could imagine, and not one word is spoken, yet could you conceive of anything more dramatic?  Again, one of the master-strokes in Bulwer-Lytton’s “Richelieu” is where the Cardinal escapes from the swords of his enemies who rush into his sleeping apartments to slay him, by lying down on his bed with his hands crossed upon his breast, and by his ward’s lover (but that instant won to loyalty to Richelieu) announcing to his fellow conspirators that they have come too late—­old age has forestalled them, “Richelieu is dead.”

6.  Comedy is Achieved in the Same Dramatic Way

The only difference between the sublime and the ridiculous is the proverbial step.  The sad and the funny are merely a difference of opinion, of viewpoint.  Tragedy and comedy are only ways of looking at things.  Often it is but a difference of to whom the circumstance happens, whether it is excruciatingly funny or unutterably sad.  If you are the person to whom it happens, there is no argument about it—­it is sad; but the very same thing happening to another person would be—­funny.

Take for example, the everyday occurrence of a high wind and a flying hat:  If the hat is yours, you chase it with unutterable thoughts—­not the least being the consciousness that hundreds may be laughing at you—­and if, just as you are about to seize the hat, a horse steps on it, you feel the tragedy of going all the way home without a hat amid the stares of the curious, and the sorrow of having to spend your good money to buy another.

But let that hat be not yours but another’s and not you but somebody else be chasing it, and the grins will play about your mouth until you smile.  Then let the horse step on the hat and squash it into a parody of a headgear, just as that somebody else is about to retrieve it—­and you will laugh outright.  As Elizabeth Woodbridge in summing up says, “the whole matter is seen to be dependent on perception of relations and the assumption of a standard of reference.”

Incidentally the foregoing example is a very clear instance of the comic effect that, like the serious or tragic effect, is achieved without words.  Any number of examples of comedy which secure their effect without action will occur to anyone, from the instance of the lackadaisical Englishman who sat disconsolately on the race track fence, and welcomed the jockey who had ridden the losing horse that had swept away all his patrimony, with these words:  “Aw, I say, what detained you?” [1] to the comedy that was achieved without movement or words in the expressive glance that the owner of the crushed headgear gave the guileless horse.