Comedy According to Edgar Allen Poe

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          In the short story of Hop Frog, Edgar Allen Poe basically calls his readers fat and oily monkeys that love to make fun of others pain. Hop Frog is one not only written for entertainment and illumination, but also one written to show the readers of Poe’s other short stories the meaning of comedy. This story that hinges on revenge and practical jokes shows a comedy that Poe doesn’t show in his other short stories. Thomas H. Pauly the author of the article “Hop Frog – Is the Last Laugh Best?” argues that Poe’s reasoning for writing Hop Frog was to show the readers of his previous works that his writing contains much intellectual humor that they overlooked.
          In the opening paragraph of the article Pauly states that Hop Frog is a story of revenge that defines the central idea of comedy. Pauly goes on to describe the opening paragraph of the story, saying that Poe associates a certain type of humor with the character of the King and his ministers. It is a comedy that deals with practical jokes and physical pain and harm to others. It is not an intellectual comedy but a debase crude sense of humor. In order to show how rudimentary this type of comedy is, according to Pauly, Poe characterizes the King as a corpulent oily being that doesn’t understand verbal ingenuity and relates it to the readers who failed to understand Poe’s previous use of intellectual humor.
          In order to back up this thesis that Pauly presents he uses many examples from the story that describe the essence of the comedy that Poe is describing. In the article one example given to show the grotesque comedy that Poe doesn’t want in his stories, is how Hop Frog is a deformed creature that walks funny and looks quite different from everyone else. The King makes fun of Hop Frog for the disabilities that he has and he finds humor in it, and when the King gets tired of the same deformed Hop Frog he makes him drink wine to cause Hop Frog to go mad in a drunken stupor. This cruelty shown by the King shows that his practical jokes are vial and are not the true type of comedy that Poe wants to present in his short stories. Poe tries to show that his readers are like the King in Hop Frog if they do not understand the highly intellectual humor that he includes in many of his other shorty stories. 

         Another example in the article by Pauly that is used to portray the bad sense of humor, is the part of the story when Hop Frog decides to takes his revenge upon the King for harming his dear and only friend, Trippetta. In an act of rage Hop Frog has the King and his ministers dress up like monkeys for the masquerade. They tar and feather themselves and then chain themselves together. Hop Frog finally gets his revenge when he sets them all on fire. The King and his ministers are completely oblivious to Hop Frog’s ingenious plan for revenge and humor. This lack of awareness by the King echoes the idea that Poe’s readers are unaware of the ingenious humor Poe includes in his other works. However, Pauly also includes in the article the idea that Hop Frog did not necessarily win the battle of comedy. In an effort to show original humor Hop Frog goes mad and essentially loses himself and has to run away for his crime, thus showing once again the grotesqueness of practical jokes and humor that pokes at the pain of others.                         
         Thomas H. Pauly’s article on the story of Hop Frog shows that Edgar Allen Poe was very sensitive to the inspired humor that he uses in his works. He defines true comedy to be of an original and resourceful source, not something that distortedly makes fun of other peoples pain and suffering. Comedy and use of humor is an art and Poe desperately tries to show this idea in the story of Hop Frog. 

 Works Cited
 Pauly, Thomas H. ""Hop Frog-Is the Last Laugh Best?"" Studies in Short Fiction11               (1974):   307-09. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Sept. 2011.