long as we look for the explanation of an amusing word or phrase in
the phrase or word itself, apart from all it suggests to us. Nowhere
will the usual method prove to be so inadequate as here. With the
exception, however, of a few special instances to which we shall
recur later, the repetition of a word is never laughable in itself.
It makes us laugh only because it symbolises a special play of moral
elements, this play itself being the symbol of an altogether
material diversion. It is the diversion of the cat with the mouse,
the diversion of the child pushing back the Jack-in-the-box, time
after time, to the bottom of his box,--but in a refined and
spiritualised form, transferred to the realm of feelings and ideas.
Let us then state the law which, we think, defines the main comic
varieties of word-repetition on the stage: IN A COMIC REPETITION OF
WORDS WE GENERALLY FIND TWO TERMS: A REPRESSED FEELING WHICH GOES
OFF LIKE A SPRING, AND AN IDEA THAT DELIGHTS IN REPRESSING THE
FEELING ANEW.

When Dorine is telling Orgon of his wife's illness, and the latter
continually interrupts him with inquiries as to the health of
Tartuffe, the question: "Et tartuffe?" repeated every few moments,
affords us the distinct sensation of a spring being released. This
spring Dorine delights in pushing back, each time she resumes her
account of Elmire's illness. And when Scapin informs old Geronte
that his son has been taken prisoner on the famous galley, and that
a ransom must be paid without delay, he is playing with the avarice
of Geronte exactly as Dorine does with the infatuation of Orgon. The
old man's avarice is no sooner repressed than up it springs again
automatically, and it is this automatism that Moliere tries to
indicate by the mechanical repetition of a sentence expressing
regret at the money that would have to be forthcoming: "What the