THE JOY 0' LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1177, 12 July 1911, Page 8

THE JOY 0' LIFE.

ARCADY AND LAUGHTER. MOSTLY Till; LATTET!. (Bt Sylvius.) "The Arcadians," now being played at Hie Opera House is not remarkable for its musical brilliance. No one will worry its tuiins when the players have passed into Hie mists of memory, unless if be the butcher boy, who may struggle with Tom Wall's funereal "comic" "I've Gotlei- Molter," and .-o get his sausages, chops, and steak orders mixed. "Vet this musical play has been running for two years in London under the direction of Mr. .Robert Courtuoidge, and is still going, and everywhere else it has been equally successful. Why? Some will say because- of its picturesqueness, but that after all is only a detail, as Phil Goatcher's green and gold Arcady fades never to return after the first act. No, the one and only cause of "The Arcadians'" success is its especial talent for provoking laughter. Its comedy is its fortune, and it is so difficult to write "funny staff." Novel-readers of the steady "two a week" order know how rarely they light upon a genuinely humorous story, and those who can write.yarns to make a world laugh iuvnriably desire to do serious work. Mark Twain aspired tS leave behind him something other than his yarns which crackle with laughter. In lis "Joan of Arc" ho succeeded in doing so. It should be rend by all who fancy that Twain lived and died a humorist. Jerome K. Jerome is another case in point. He hates to be accounted a writer of humorous stories, and gets savage when anyone mentions "Three Men in a Boat." He likes himself best as the author of "The Passing of the Third Floor Back." in which there-is an element of mysticism, and a thumping good moral. "The Arcadians" is just a symphony of laughter—hence,its success. I cannot recall any comedy that keeps tho public laughing being a financial failure. There arc some which amuse one section of playgoers and are accounted utter drivel by another, or maybe there is an element of suggestiveness in the humour which tickles one class and disgusts another. The appeal must be generally to all classes—that is what makes it so difficult to write.funny dialogue—dialogue which does not merely call for a smirk of the lips, but which "let's all split" (as Shakespeare has it). I saw three young ladies in full evening toilet leaning on the balustrade of the dress circle at "The Arcadians" helpless with laughter at tho drollery of Peter Doody, the melancholy jockey, who after wasting on soda-water and can-away seeds, is so desperately hungry that he ask« a shimmering goddess of fashion if "she has such a .thing about her as a bit o' cold puddin'." There are many varieties of laughter, and when I refer to that, kind which I please to term the "joy o' life," I mean the hearty, jolly laughter that is born of the mind being tickled by the unexpected. Douglas Jerrold, in his "Anatomy of Laughter," divided the laugh in seven species—l, the convulsive laugh; 2, the jolly laugh; 3, the pleasant laugh; i, the polite laugh; 5, the scornful laugh; 6, the sneering laugh; 7, the frigid laugh. I might add the hysterical laugh, the sardenic laugh; the ha! ha! of tho villain of melodrama. But when one means laughter as applied to comedy and ttie ioy of life, there is only one which counts. Some , men are so bent on being considered pleasant that they were a perpetual simper—and are judged on it. On .the other ■ hand almost everyone can. recall people whom they have never seen laugh, and whom they do not believe could be guilty of such a. physical indiscretion. Steady there, I say! They are those who either lack the faculty to laugh constitutionally—those devoid of the sense of humour—or who have been robbed of it by a trick of fate. I know a man once whose seriousness rather embarassed those who take joy in life. Ho never got beyond a wintry smile—oh, a wretched .attempt. I referred to his unbroken seriousness once, and he told me his story—then I knew of a soul-searing grief which had damned up tho floodpates of laughter 'for ever, and a great pity welled up iu me. At times laughter becomes a'tragedy, as it was to tho wife in Pinero's "A wife Without a .Smile." The husband, was an infernal joker and cackler, who could not understand his wife's smilelessness, and he plans and invents all sorts oC devices to induce her to laugh—without effect. Then one day it transpires that he has married her without Retting the decree nisi made absolute in his divorce suit with his first wife.. Then the girl laughed and laughed arid laughed—she was free! Her smile-dam had been the lwre of a jokist, and, once removed, the flood burst, and she flew into the arms of her true affinity.

And after all—what is laughter? An ; American humourist has called it "an ' undignified widening of the human mouth, accompanied by a noise resembling a cough in the effort to avoid swallowing a chestnut." This is the humourist's view—and so.much American humour is strained. Here is a dictionary meaning (and a dictionary is never humorous) of laughter: "An expression' of mirth, manifested chiefly in certain convulsive and partly involuntary actions of the muscle? of respiration,"which produce a succession of short abrupt sounds, with certain movements of the muscles of J lie face." To analyse a laugh in this manner is as cold-blooded an operation as cutting off the fingers of the dead after a battle for the rings on them, for a laugh of the right sort is just a kind of spontaneous music which chimes out from a gladdened soul, to make life sweeter, and he who can command it—oh, rare gift—is king. To sober-minded folk it seems preposterous that tho Scots miner, Harry Lander, should bo ablo to command from .£IOOO to .£I2OO a week all the year round. Before this tremendous money-maker, the talent of Caruso, Jfclba, tlie late Sir Henry Irving, and the- great Bernhardt in magnetising money fade info insignificance. Artistically and intellectually they arc, I dare say, each and all tho superior of the Scotch Finger of "Slop You're Tickling, Jock," and "We Parted on tho Shore," but whore the artistic phalanx enumerated set out to thrill, Lander only, sels out to makp people laugh, and the big British public would sooner be tickled to laughter than thrilled. That is why Lander is probably the highest-salaried performer that the'stage has ever known. He may not get more salary per night than Jlelba or Caruso but he can get it all the year round, whilst the operatic artists are subject to seasons. The value of laughter is incalculable. With it comes a wonderful exhilaration, of which we are to a prreat extent unconscious through use. What causes this is. difficult to say, but it may be that the vibration of a hrarty fit of laughter has a hurrying effect on the circulation of the blood, which suffuses a pleasing glow I through the whole system. Jn sO nie ca-es this effect is to strong that it attacks the controlling nerve centre?, and then "thev simply ennuot stop lauchiug." and thev laugh and lauc-li until they ache all over Next day they feel like a stout man of forty, who has had to run a quarter of a mile for a doctor (without ivarniii" nf tho event). There has been a. healthy recrudescence of laughter as the result of tho advent of Iho picture show, agers of such enfertainments say fhal jt is nlvviys advisable lo have three or four comic pictures in a. programme, and a "star" comic picture is always better business than a "star" dramatic or scenic picture. JMucli of the humour in these pictures is very weak, yet all round wi'll be heard explosions of laughter at tho ludicrous , antics of Foolshead. Tontolini and Co. Laughter in church would seem to be out of nlacc. but there are many instances of it. In England thn chief clerical humourist, for many yours was the late "Rev. H: V\. Howcis, who (according to a. reoent arl'nlp) once nnnoiincd from (he pulpit:— "T sec someone has been criticising laughter in church. Let me tell him that T would far rither see laughter in the House of (iml than envy, and coyetousne.ss and woi'ldliness and uncharitablcncAS. Laughter, innocent laughter, cheers and cleanses the heart, and prepares it to receive tho lesson , ; of Christianity." Lnuehter—what a dull world this would be without you!