It would be an endless task to consider comedy in the same light, and to mention the innumerable shifts that small wits put in practice to raise a laugh.
Bullock in a short coat, and Norris in a long one, seldom failed of this effect.[A] In ordinary comedies a broad and a narrow brimmed hat are different characters.

Sometimes the wit of a scene lies in a shoulder-belt, and sometimes in a pair of whiskers.

A lover running about the stage, with his head peeping out of a barrel, was thought a very good jest in King Charles the Second's time, and invented by one of the first wits of the age.[B] But because ridicule is not so delicate as compassion, and because the objects that make us laugh are infinitely more numerous than those that make us weep, there is a much greater latitude for comic than tragic artifices, and by consequence a much greater indulgence to be allowed them.
[Footnote A: Addison's comment about these two favourite comedians shows that then, as now, eccentricity in dress formed a popular species of stage humour.] [Footnote B: Sir George Etherege, in his comedy of "The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub."] COMIC EPILOGUES _( From the "Spectator")_ No.338.FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 1712.
"Nil fuit unquam Sic dispar sibi." HOR.SAT.III.

1-1-18.
"Made up of nought but inconsistencies." I find the tragedy of the "Distressed Mother" is published to-day.

The author of the prologue,[A] I suppose pleads an old excuse I have read somewhere, of "being dull with design;" and the gentleman who writ the epilogue[B] has, to my knowledge, so much of greater moment to value himself upon, that he will easily forgive me for publishing the exceptions made against gaiety at the end of serious entertainments in the following letter: I should be more unwilling to pardon him, than anybody, a practice which cannot have any ill consequence, but from the abilities of the person who is guilty of it.
[Footnote A: Steele.] [Footnote B: Addison credited Budgell with the epilogue.] "MR.