They say that to play the piano badly but nonetheless take the audience and tune with you, you actually need to be a very good pianist. Likewise in a world where there is little true comedy it takes someone who knows about the seriousness of life to pull out the nuggets of laughter and show people how to laugh at the tragic. Whether it is the Greeks poking fun at the way men have all the power, Oscar Wilde lurking behind the hypocrisy of the tight-minded English society, ‘The Owl’ walking the street of the French Revolution and ranting against the irony of it all or the brilliant Li Po always half drunk so the secret police don’t arrest him ( can there be a better example of a life-long performance).
You don’t do comedy lightly as Spike Millighan proved with his black depression ( a common ailment amongst comic writers). The precision of their wit is a commentary on the foibles and stupidities of people taking themselves seriously. In a strange way it is seriousness that is the ultimate joke for if it were not how could anyone ever make fun of it? For comedy is comment, ideas the mind uses to play with reality. Seriousness and comedy are two sides of the same coin.
As Walpole once said in paraphrase, ‘The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those feel.’