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Violence and the Comic in the Plays of Edward Bond FRANCES RADEMACHER Edward Bond's name is often taken as a synonym for violence - the baby's murder in Saved. the cannibalism in Early Morning, or the torture in Lear. However, it is Bond's style, not his subject, that produces a shock effect. According to Tony Coull, Bond shocks an audience by evoking "the vulnerabi!ity and the dignity ofthe human body with a painter's skill.'" Richard Scharine suggests another cause, Bond's use of violence "to attack both existing institutions and revered traditions. ....., Both critics regard the shock effect of violence as extrinsic to Bond's plays, and they overlook the context of his violence - variations of the comic as analyzed by Freud. The affinity between Bond's violence and the comic is central to the meaning of his early plays. Bond theatricalizes three comic contexts for violence: jokes, parody, and humor. According to Freud, jokes release inhibitions, acting as a safety-valve for impulses that society normally forces people to repress.' "Tendentious" jokes release the inhibitions imposed on aggression and Ius!. Rather than strike someone who irritates us, we make that person the butt of a joke; rather than engage in adultery, we make our desire the subject of a joke. Thus, tendentious jokes are substitutes for antisocial behavior. In Bond's plays, however, tendentious jokes intensify violence, predicating or accompanying the situations in which violence occurs. In Freud's view, jokes liberate inhibitions by maintaining enough distance between the perpetrator (and audience) and the butt of ajoke; when we identify with the butt of a joke, we pity him and feel anxious and guilty for laughing at him. Parody, on the other hand, destroys the "unity that exists between people's characters as we know them and their speeches and actions, by replacing either the exalted figures or their utterances by inferior ones" (Freud, p. 20t). Parody makes someone else appear comical by removing the distance between the authority figures and the paradis!. In effect, the parodist shows that authority figures are no better than anyone else. Bond carries the argument of parody a step further, implying that authority figures ought to be exceptional because the Violence and the Comic in Bond's Plays 259 consequences of their actions extend to others - their incompetence and irresponsibility embroil their subjects in violence. Freud distinguishes humor from jokes and parody: the humorist distallces himself from his own suffering by trivializing it, by laughing at it. Humor is thus a defense. Although never the central comic context in Bond's plays, humor is always the response to violence of the intellectual. The violence in Bond's major plays through The Sea follows a pattern:4 The Pope's Wedding and Saved rely primarily on jokes to depict the situations in which violence occurs; Early Morning and Narrow Road 10 the Deep North depend principally on parody to reveal the causes of violence; Lear and TheSea rely upon both jokes and parody to present the causes and the effects of violence. Lear and The Sea also move away from comic contexts to present alternatives to violence. In The Pope's Wedding and in Saved, jokes surround acts of violence. Early in The Pope's Weddillg, a group offarm laborers joke: LORRY (sings) Betsy drop your drawers it's Monday. No Idropped my drawers on Sunday. LEN (sings) I'm gooin apull them off for you. I'll eat your tail off if yoo doo. BILL Anytime. Bya Join the queue.s Towards the end of the play, the same group make a similar joke as they stone the hermit Alen's shack: RON (off) She's bein' raped. BYO (off) Don't shove till yoor 'cad a the queue. JUNE (off) Next please. JOE (off) I'm on l' agood thing 'ere. Ireckon I'll put 'er up in the business. (Pw. xiv. P·301) In scene 3 of Saved, a gang of young men joke in analogous fashion: COLIN Roger the lodger 'ad abad cough. MIKE 'E sneezed so 'ard. COLIN 'Is door knob fell off. BARRY 'Is landlady said we'll soon 'ave yer well. COLIN SO...

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