(44) It has been alleged that laughter is rarely good on the stage - in other words, that it is difficult to imitate laughter or to laugh voluntarily with success.

It scarcely needs to be pointed out that voluntary laughter is quite different from infectious or sympathetic laughter, which is real and involuntary.

As to what actually happens on the stage in regard to this matter I am able to speak with authority. Mr. Forbes Robertson has informed me through Emeritus - Professor Masson that 'laughter on the stage does not always fail to be convincing,' but that ' it must be conceded that stage laughter is often not effective.' He says, however, that ' many players have been able to make their audience laugh with them, by infection as it were, and outside any influence of situation or words.' It appears, therefore, that there may be an imitation of laughter on the stage, which is fairly good, and which closely resembles ordinary involuntary laughter.

'The born good laugher,' Mr. Forbes Robertson says,so far as his observation goes, 'if he happen to be an actor, will be a good laugher on the stage,' but he adds there is much against him in his efforts to convince an audience of the reality of his merriment. The situation or the words, for instance, may not be adequately funny; or nothing may be seen or heard by the audience that seems sufficient to provoke the actor's merriment; or the pulse, Humour, and spirit of the audience, always uncertain, may not at the moment be responsive. Such things as these, he says, may lead to imitated laughter on the stage being called a poor imitation, even when it has been fairly good.

The commotion of the muscles of the chest, larynx, and face is so complicated and extensive in laughter as to make it a reasonable expectation that there should be a difficulty in reaching a successful imitation at will, and in appearing really to laugh when there is no real laughter; but it is, on high authority, a difficulty which can be to a large extent surmounted. Stage laughter may often be poor, but on the other hand it can be good and effective.

(45) When a person laughs heartily, his friends beside him often join in the laughter - laugh with him - though they have no knowledge of the cause of his laughter. In other words, persons may laugh at the sight of laughter, just as they may yawn at the sight of yawning. Their feet are not being tickled, nor are they experiencing any joyous or merry state of mind, unless indeed that state of mind has been roused by their thinking that the laughter they see and hear is itself ludicrous, in which case they would not be laughing with but laughing at.

This may possibly sometimes happen, and may then explain why persons join in laughter. But, I think, it is correct to say that laughter in the strict sense is communicable - that laughter evokes laughter as much as yawning evokes yawning, and in exactly the same way. This is not the same as joining in the laughter of an actor on the stage, when the ludicrous words or scenes are presented to the audience as well as to the actor, and when the audience laughs at them, as well as with the actor in his laughing. In the case with which I am now dealing, the bystanders are supposed to have no knowledge of what has made their friend laugh, yet they join him in laughing.

If this be correct, we have something like a fourth kind of laughter - (1) laughter from tickling; (2) laughter on a mere threat of tickling without actual tickling; (3) laughter as the expression of a mental state; and (4) laughter by infection or sympathy - not as the expression of a felt mental state. The second is related to the first more or less as the fourth is to the third.

There is no more reason, so far as I can see, for thinking that the person who joins in the laughter of one who is being tickled imagines that he himself is being tickled, than there is that the person who yawns with a yawner thinks himself bored or weary. To call such things as these reflexes through the eye or ear seems to me to be mere phrasing, and to explain nothing.

(46) In a certain sense it appears to be true that a man who is alone with his own thoughts, and is shut out from seeing or hearing the actions or words of others, rarely laughs, though he may be in a state of full happiness. The agreeable feelings he may experience in such circumstances seldom excite him to laughter. Even the memories of ludicrous scenes and words rarely bring laughter to the man recalling them, when he is quite alone, though he may have laughed loudly over them when they were actually seen and heard.

It is not correct, however, as I have shown, to describe the boy, who is reading Artemus Ward or the Pickwick Papers in a room which he only occupies, as being alone, for the author of the work be is reading is there with him, speaking to him, telling him about funny things in funny words, and causing him to laugh loud and long. It is clear that the boy is in good company and is not alone.

When we listen to his laughter it seems beyond question the expression of a merry heart, but if we open the door and see him convulsed and contorted, holding his sides, and gesticulating in a senseless way, it is not easy to regard his conduct as the expression of pure joy, so unrelated does his condition appear to any state of happiness.

(47) Sight, hearing, and touch are the senses through which nearly all laughter is excited. They are certainly the senses most operative - the two first in a special degree. Perhaps little more than smiling ever comes through the sense of touch, unless in the case of those who are both blind and deaf from birth, apart always from that special touch on special parts of the body which constitutes tickling. We see or hear, or both see and hear, most of the things which provoke laughter. Of course the memories of seeing and hearing may do so, but in imagination we are then actually seeing and hearing.