毫无疑问,梅瑞狄斯和柏格森是因为厌倦十九世纪浓重的道德说教才乞灵于风俗喜剧的。由于他们实际上把自己的认识局限在风俗喜剧领域,他们为我们提供了关于这一喜剧形式极为精深的理论。柏格森说:喜剧是一种游戏,一种模仿人生的游戏。而梅瑞狄斯在《自私自利者·序言》中,则把这种游戏理解为在远离外部世界的灰尘与冲突的客厅里对 There is no doubt that Meredith and Bergson begged to come to terms with comedies because they were fed up with the intense moral preaching of the nineteenth century. Because they actually limited their own understanding to the field of civic comedy, they provided us with a very sophisticated theory about this form of comedy. Bergson said: Comedy is a game, a life-like game. And Meredith, in the Preamble to Selfishness, understood the game as being in the living room of dust and conflict away from the outside world