Contrast may be used effectively in dialogue. The modern dramatist sometimes overdoes this use. Because he has observed that the greatest suffering of the strongest natures rarely finds expression in rich or varied speech, he tries to discover words which in their feebleness, their inappositeness, or their unexpected commonplaceness, contrast sharply with what a hearer feels is the intensity of the emotion behind them. This has given us in recent drama some dialogue unnatural in its tameness. This kind of contrast, however, when handled with real understanding, is extremely effective. In the parting of Laurie and the heroine in _Iris_,[34] the very commonplaceness of the details of which they talk shows that they do not dare to speak of what is really in their minds, and makes the best preparation for the sudden loosing of emotion by Iris in what would be ordinarily a simple request: "Close the jalousies!"
Except in our recent revival of Moralities for the delectation of moral Broadway, we are growing away dramatically from mere contrasting of types of character and from plays in which a serious and a comic plot are but loosely connected. Yet dramatists will always find contrast highly useful in emphasizing points of characterization and important values in the story. Moreover, any trained dramatist knows that when his audience has been somewhat exhausted by laughter or tears, a scene of contrasting emotional value is of the highest importance. By changing the focus of interest, it renews the power of response exhausted in the just preceding scene. As has been pointed out again and again, though it may be true that the drunken porter in _Macbeth_ was funnier for an Elizabethan public than he is today, nevertheless his coming breaks the tension of the terrible murder scene and makes it possible even now to turn to fresh horrors with surer responsiveness. There is no space here to go into any satisfactory analysis of the basal relations between the serious and the comic, but every competent actor knows that frequently, if the full desired comic values are to appear, it is necessary to play a part, or all the parts, with great seriousness, even in a piece meant to be broadly comic for the audience. This is true not merely in some of Shaw's plays,--_Man and Superman_, _You Never Can Tell_, etc., but in many old farces and even in burlesque. In the contrast the audience makes between the seriousness of the characters in what they do and say and the attitude the dramatist creates toward them lie the real comic values. Often it is only on the flint of the serious that one may strike the most brilliant spark of the comic.