“The Continuity of Scenes is observed more than in any of our Plays, excepting his own Fox and Alchemist, They are not broken above twice, or thrice at the most, in the whole Comedy:  and in the two best of CORNEILLE’s Plays, the CID and CINNA, they are interrupted once a piece.

“The Action of the Play is entirely One:  the end or aim of which, is the settling MQROSE’s estate on DAUPHINE.

“The Intrigue of it is the greatest and most noble of any pure unmixed Comedy in any language.  You see in it, many persons of various Characters and Humours; and all delightful.

“As first, MOROSE, an old man, to whom all noise, but his own talking, is offensive.  Some, who would be thought critics, say, ’This humour of his is forced.’  But, to remove that objection, we may consider him, first, to be naturally of a delicate hearing, as many are, to whom all sharp sounds are unpleasant:  and, secondly, we may attribute much of it to the peevishness of his age, or the wayward authority of an old man in his own house, where he may make himself obeyed; and this the Poet seems to allude to, in his name MOROSE.  Besides this, I am assured from divers persons, that BEN.  JOHNSON was actually acquainted with such a man, one altogether as ridiculous as he is here represented.

“Others say, ’It is not enough, to find one man of such an humour.  It must he common to more; and the more common, the more natural.’  To prove this, they instance in the best of comical characters, FALSTAFF.  There are many men resembling him; Old, Fat, Merry, Cowardly, Drunken, Amorous, Vain, and Lying.  But to convince these people; I need but [to] tell them, that Humour is the ridiculous extravagance of conversation, wherein one man differs from all others.  If then it be common, or communicated to any; how differs it from other men’s? or what indeed causes it to be ridiculous, so much as the singularity of it.  As for FALSTAFF, he is not properly one Humour; but a Miscellany of Humours or Images drawn from so many several men.  That wherein he is singular is his Wit, or those things he says, praeter expectatum, ‘unexpected by the audience’; his quick evasions, when you imagine him surprised:  which, as they are extremely diverting of themselves, so receive a great addition from his person; for the very sight of such an unwieldy old debauched fellow is a Comedy alone.

“And here, having a place so proper for it, I cannot but enlarge somewhat upon this subject of Humour, into which I am fallen.

“The Ancients had little of it in their Comedies:  for the [Greek:  no geloiou] [facetious absurdities] of the Old Comedy, of which ARISTOPHANES was chief, was not so much to imitate a man; as to make the people laugh at some odd conceit, which had commonly somewhat of unnatural or obscene in it.  Thus, when you see SOCRATES brought upon the Stage, you are not to imagine him made ridiculous by the imitation of his actions:  but rather, by making him perform something very unlike himself; something so childish and absurd, as, by comparing it with the gravity of the true SOCRATES, makes a ridiculous object for the spectators.