Clay Lane Blog

Laughter in the House

Sir Philip Sidney reminded comedians that when the audience is laughing they aren’t necessarily the better for it.

October 8

Laughter in the House

I recently added this post, Laughter in the House.

Sir Philip Sidney is remembered today chiefly for his selfless gesture as he lay wounded on the field of the Battle of Zutphen in 1586: see ‘Thy Necessity is Yet Greater than Mine’. But Sidney was not only a soldier and gentleman. He was a deep thinker, who wrote what is arguably the first serious work of literary criticism in the English language, An Apologie for Poetrie (ca. 1582). This was a reply to Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse (1579), which had been prompted by an outbreak of plague and the feeling that in such times writing plays was at best frivolous, at worst socially harmful. Gosson dedicated his tract to Sidney, an unsolicited honour that placed him in a delicate position. Ever the gentleman, Sir Philip did not name Gosson in his reply, but nevertheless came to the defence of Elizabethan drama.

That is not to say Sidney was uncritical. One of the chief targets for his mild-mannered disapproval was Elizabethan comedy. The comedians of his day took the line that anyone who got a good laugh out of a play must be the better for the experience, but Sidney made an extremely important distinction between laughter and delight, noting that laughter is often produced by very unworthy things.

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