They have nothing to do with the play, but they come on immediately
after anything very sad has happened and make love. This is why we
watch sad scenes on the stage with such patience. We are not eager
for them to be got over. Maybe they are very uninteresting scenes, as
well as sad ones, and they make us yawn; but we have no desire to see
them hurried through. The longer they take the better pleased we are:
we know that when they are finished the comic lovers will come on.

They are always very rude to each other, the comic lovers. Everybody
is more or less rude and insulting to every body else on the stage;
they call it repartee there! We tried the effect of a little stage
"repartee" once upon some people in real life, and we wished we hadn't
afterward. It was too subtle for them. They summoned us before a
magistrate for "using language calculated to cause a breach of the
peace." We were fined 2 pounds and costs!

They are more lenient to "wit and humor" on the stage, and know how to
encourage the art of vituperation. But the comic lovers carry the
practice almost to excess. They are more than rude--they are abusive.
They insult each other from morning to night. What their married life
will be like we shudder to think!

In the various slanging matches and bullyragging competitions which
form their courtship it is always the maiden that is most successful.
Against her merry flow of invective and her girlish wealth of
offensive personalities the insolence and abuse of her boyish adorer
cannot stand for one moment.

To give an idea of how the comic lovers woo, we perhaps cannot do
better than subjoin the following brief example: