Omne trium perfectum. The perfection of the number, 3. I was asked this week to make a small edit to my script for a play for young audiences that is currently in rehearsal. The director wanted to make use of the 'rule of three' to carry a joke through the play.
As someone who has been performing comedic pieces for a number of years, I am very familiar with the 'rule of three', but it made me wonder why it is so much a part of literature and especially comedy. Did it start with the Holy Trinity or does it go back even further than that? Mother, Father, child? I looked for a Wikipedia listing and there it was. An analysis of why the number three is so important not only in comedy, but literature in general. Analyzing stories the listing mentioned the Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, Three Billy Goats Gruff. In comedy there are the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers (yes, I know there were officially four but let's be honest. How many of us really remember Zeppo?)
Already, in my script (as in many stories) the hero gets three tries to win the contest. Three nights to discover the wily princess' secret. Everyone knows if you find a magic lamp you get three wishes - one to test it out, one to be greedy, and usually one to mess up everything you've tried to accomplish and take you back to square one.
That is pretty much the rule of three's in a nutshell. A story needs one instance or event to establish something. The second similar event is to build tension and establish a pattern. Then the third instance comes along to destroy the entire sequence or take the pattern on a sharp detour. Unwittingly or deliberately almost every good comedy routine or humorous story follows this pattern. It must be hard wired into the human brain. Maybe someday I should write a story where the hero gets four chances or maybe seven. After all, there were seven dwarfs in Snow White. I wonder why seven?
