Wylie Sypher
NIETZSCHE AND SOCRATES IN MESSINA
Shakespeare did not often arrange his comic affairs more
recklessly than he did in Messina, where Benedick and Beatrice oc–
cupy themselves with cutting Cupid's bowstring, and the outrageous
Claudio slanders
his
bride Hero in the full congregation where he
should wed; then Dogberry will be writ down for an ass and thus
save the whole preposterous business from the black and surly devices
of the bastard Don John. Apparently the comic structure of
Muck
Ado About Nothing
will not bear many of the external stresses of
criticism; at least no one would have thought so until the current
re-examinations of Shakespearian drama. Perhaps we may go further
and say that one of the great critical attainments of the twentieth
century has been its new understanding of comedy. We have not been
able to write tragedy, but we have been reading Kierkegaard, Dosto–
evsky, and Kafka very intently and have perceived the absurdity of
man's situation, an almost intolerable comedy where pain is wisdom.
We have resurrected the Fool--original impotence and innocence;
guilt, pathos, and triumph. The bloody clowns of Rouault have their
roles upon the modern scene. Nietzsche, we have remembered, felt that
our deepest insights must appear as folly. And folly usually wears the
mask-the comic mask.
In beginning to speak about
ll/luck Ado,
we do not need to be
portentous and invoke Kierkegaard or Innocence, for the scene in
Messina rings as loudly as any in Shakespeare with the silvery laugh–
ter of Meredith's comic faun, who surely contrived these high-spirited
passages between Benedick and the shrewish Beatrice. This bright
laughter of the nineteenth-century faun is not a thoughtless hilarity.
Meredith accepted comedy as the ultimate civilizer; he insisted that
to enjoy high comedy at all "you must have a sober liking of your
