It is, no doubt, somewhat complex. For one thing, we have
pleasure in meeting old friends. Sir Peter, Lady Teazle, Charles, even
Joseph, are agreeable creatures who have all sorts of pleasant
associations for us. Again, we love to encounter not only familiar
characters but familiar jokes. Like Goldsmith's Diggory, we can never
help laughing at the story of "ould Grouse in the gunroom." The best
order of dramatic wit does not become stale, but rather grows upon us.
We relish it at least as much at the tenth repetition as at the first.
But while these considerations may partly account for the pleasure we
take in seeing the play as a whole, they do not explain why the Screen
Scene in particular should interest and excite us. Another source of
pleasure, as before indicated, may be renewed recognition of the
ingenuity with which the scene is pieced together. However familiar we
may be with it, short of actually knowing it by heart, we do not recall
the details of its dovetailing, and it is a delight to realize afresh
the neatness of the manipulation by which the tension is heightened from
speech to speech and from incident to incident.
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