DAVID HOCKNEY

L

For Laughter

by Margaret Drabble

L is for Laughter, which has been well considered one of the strangest and most glorious of human faculties. Some say it is a uniquely human gift, and that animals do not have a sense of humour. This, despite the smile of the Cheshire Cat and the grin of many a dog I have known, may well be true. What is laughter? The dictionary tells us it is the ‘spasmodic utterance, facial distortion, shaking of the sides, etc.’ which expresses ‘mirth, amusement, sense of the ludicrous,. etc.’ Is it common to all cultures, and when did it originate, in what dark palaeolithic joke or double entendre or prattfall? These are questions at least as well worth pondering as the carnivorous or cannibalistic instincts of our ancestors, but I suppose the evidence, being perishable, is inevitably hard to uncover.

Why do we laugh at some jokes, and merely smile at others? When is our laughter most spontaneous, most sincere? Some writers make us laugh aloud to ourselves when we are alone in a room – P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Michael Frayn, Marcel Proust. Are we then laughing to share our mirth with others?

Theatre laughter is another matter, and there are several varieties of it. Canned laughter, corpse laughter, catching laughter. These are some London laughs so distinctive that we can recognise them in any auditorium. (I speak feelingly, because I used to be married to one of them and the sister-in-law of the other: both belong to fine comic actors, who are generous with their recognition of the skills of others.) Sometimes we laugh to demonstrate our understanding, sometimes we cannot help it. At children’s parties in the 1940s we used to laugh so much at those creaky old Laurel and Hardy movies that we helplessly wet our pants as we bounced around on the old three-piece settee. Rarely comes now that spirit of delight, which perhaps is just as well. Do modern children laugh as wildly, as indecorously?

They say that laughter is cruel, that the heart of comedy is cruelty. We laugh in contempt and scorn. We laugh at the misfortunes of others. All that is true. But we can also laugh at ourselves, and in this we become double human. And do we not, in looking back on friendships, holidays, parties, good times, remember the laughter even when the jokes are forgotten?