Yet deny I not but that they may goe well together; for as in Alexanders picture well set out wee delight without laughter, and in twenty mad Anticks we laugh without delight, so in Hercules, painted with his great beard and furious countenance, in womans attire, spinning at Omphales commaundement, it breedeth both delight and laughter.* For the representing of so strange a power in love procureth delight: and the scornefulnes of the action stirreth laughter.
But I speake to this purpose, that all the end of the comicall part bee not vpon such scornefull matters as stirreth laughter onely, but, mixt with it, that delightful teaching which is the end of Poesie.* And the great fault euen in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainely by Aristotle, is that they styrre laughter in sinfull things, which are rather execrable then ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pittied then scorned.* For what is it to make folkes gape at a wretched Begger, or a beggerly Clowne, or, against lawe of hospitality, to iest at straungers, because they speake not English so well as wee doe?
Original spelling.
From ‘Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie’ (ca. 1582, 1907), edited by J. Churton Collins.
* See Heracles and Omphale.
* The word ‘end’ here means ‘purpose, aim’.
* Writing in 1798, William Eton found the comedy in the Ottoman Empire was of this sneering, scornful kind, and was of the opinion that it arose from a society in which free speech was so limited that being nasty about the kind of people the Government did not like was the only humour left. See The Source of Civilisation.