NIETZSCHE AND SOCRATES IN MESSINA
703
kind and a sober estimate of our civilized qualities."
If
we enter
Messina with any sober estimate of our civilized qualities, we are apt
to regard matters there with discriminations we usually reserve for the
darker areas of Shakespeare, those not so clearly in the comic radiance.
Meredith did not have the advantage of our knowingness about
social contexts and ambiguities, but he saw that "the comic poet
is in the narrow field, or enclosed square, of the society he depicts;
and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of men's intellects, with
reference to the operation of the social world upon their characters."
Within the enclosed narrow field 'of Messina the address to our intel–
lect is quite as direct, though not so dialectic, as in
Measure for
Measure
or any of the admitted problem plays. We sense, however,
that intellectual as the atmosphere may be, the Meredithian enclosure
is a little too narrow and remote. The comedy that is the ultimate
civilizer is a little graver and crueller and more pathetic than Mere–
dith suspected; it is more melancholy and human, and, for us, man
is more the clown and fool. Comedy is the human condition. Thus,
with our heightened uneasy sense of the ridiculous we can,
if
we
look more closely, observe how the reckless arrangements in Messina
fracture the Meredithian enclosure and become versions of a more
complete human drama.
Much Ado
is .a unique adjustment-at least
unique in Shakespeare--of the extremities that the clown may occu–
py; extremities we might call Nietzschean and Socratic.
II
While Meredith was announcing the comic spirit as the ultimate
civilizer, Nietzsche the immoralist, the essential destroyer, the man
of destiny was transvaluing all social values by his own frightening
comedy. "I do not wish to be a saint," he wrote. "I would much
rather be a clown. Perhaps I am a clown." In fact Nietzsche, assum–
ing the mask, performed for the nineteenth century the role of comic
eiron-the
mocker of the good, the benevolent, the decent Philistines,
complacent and cultured. In Nietzsche the frantic laughter of Dio–
nysus resounded against the Christian will to hypocrisy: "I am in no
way a moral monster," protested this fierce buffoon. "It is true that
my nature is in direct contrast to the sort of man who has hitherto
been honored as virtuous. But between ourselves, it seems to me that
this
is precisely a reason for pride. I am a disciple of the philosopher
