In a June 1938 radio address, Wyndham Lewis asks what the English like to laugh at and why satire so often meets resistance. Three readings from his own One-Way Song, recorded at Harvard in January 1940, follow the broadcast. Lewis turns to Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and Swift to ask why a culture with such a strong satirical tradition should grow wary of ridicule. The three poems carry that question into his own practice as a satirist.
Wyndham Lewis — 2 recordings in the archive.
Related reading: One-Way Song by Wyndham Lewis.
Related reading: Men Without Art by Wyndham Lewis.
John Bull is a great laugher. He even prides himself on this, but he only laughs at certain things. He would not dream of laughing at everything, nor does he ever laugh at the things that badly need laughing at. He laughs only at things that are unimportant. He uses his laughter in fine as a graceful self-indulgence or as a compliment to a person he esteems. he does not take his laughter seriously. When John Bull is not amused is when the icy laughter of the satiric muse breaks upon his ear. There is for him something so alien about that uncomfortable type of mirth that he immediately closes up like an oyster or buries his head like an ostrich. Satire is far too real to be at all supportable to our letter day bull. When John Bull laughs is when a little clean fun is a foot, and when he definitely does not laugh is when laughter looks like degenerating into something akin to bad form. When laughter is serious in short of all disgusting things, the ghastly and tragic laugh of the setist is a thing that is so deeply resented by the average John Bull that more than three centuries after they were written, it is still impossible to produce a Ben Jonson play in London with any prospect of success. The critics, as much as the public, will not tolerate it. Thank heaven that rare Ben Jonson is so rare, one critic wrote after seeing a recent revival of Volpone. And this heartfelt sigh would be echoed by any of his readers who had seen it with very few exceptions. Yet rare Ben Jonson was as much an Elizabeth and John Bull as his namesake, the famous doctor of Lichfield, was an 18th century John Bull. The satiric Mr. Bull of 1938 is a very different person from the pre-industrial Englishman. Even among Shakespeare's plays, those in which satire lifts its ugly head, or in which the horrid satiric impulse predominates, and our national poet, oddly enough, had more than his fair share of the satiric gift, may not be played except sugarcoated, and as interpreted by a Rotarian cast of disarming ladies and gentlemen. A universal lisp goes up from stalls to gallery. Give us Midsummer Night's Dream. Oh, give us Titania. And the box office receipts are eloquent of the English aversion for…