Hazlitt on Comedy, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Olives

Abstract

Concentrates on Hazlitt’s writings about comedy and the comic spirit, especially as it is represented in the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Finds Hazlitt anticipating modern comic theories of Bergson and Bakhtin, but at times revealing his reliance on eighteenth-century (specifically Johnsonian) ideas of drama as the basis for his critiques.