Incongruity, humour and early English comic figures: Armin's natural fools, the Vice, and Tarlton the Clown

This thesis explores how Early English comic figures made their audience laugh. It focuses on Robert Armin's descriptions of natural fools, the figure of the Vice in the moral interludes, and Richard Tarlton. In my first five chapters, I establish a working theory of humour which is founded on the incongruity theory tradition, but also incorporates classical superiority theories, and Freud's relief theory. I propose that an incongruity which is simultaneously congruous from an alternate perspective, is the basic mechanism of all humour. This mechanism is related to the psychological processes by which we conceive the world and ourselves in the world. In fact, our conceptual systems of necessity create paradoxes and disjunctions which are potentially humorous. This thesis explores the ways in which Armin's natural fools, the comic Vices and Tarlton the Clown operate in this ambiguous territory in order to create the dynamics of their comedy.;For their contemporaries, the natural fools represented a disjunction between the notions of man and animal, and adult and child. The laughter directed at the natural was one way in which his contemporaries defined themselves as human and as socially competent adults. Although the fools are the targets of disparaging laughter, they are also the objects of great affection. The paradoxical nature of humour means that the laughter directed at the fools must of necessity be both inclusive and exclusive.;The Vice creates comedy by playing upon his Christian audience's emotionally contentious relationship with morality. The audience's laughter is a recognition of the disjunctions created by the conflicting impulses of their souls and their bodies. To make his audience laugh, the Vice redefines his evil as fun. The laughter in the moral interludes thereby becomes morally ambiguous.;Tarlton achieved great popularity through the professional pursuit of ambiguity. By playing both comic victim and comic hero, he encouraged a multiplicity of responses from his heterogeneous audience. He was society's designated funny man and by making people laugh, he empowered himself. Paradoxically, he only achieved this power by presenting himself as an outsider, as society's lowest common denominator.