Beatrice and Crispinella, seem at first too evidently imitated from the characters of Aurelia and Phoenixella in the earliest surviving comedy of Ben Jonson; but the “comedy daughter,” as Dickens (or Skimpole) would have expressed it, is even more coarsely and roughly drawn than in the early sketch of the more famous dramatist.  On the other hand, it must be allowed—­though it may not be recognized without a certain sense of surprise—­that the nobler and purer type of womanhood or girlhood which we owe to the hand of Marston is far above comparison with any which has been accomplished or achieved by the studious and vehement elaboration of Ben Jonson’s.  The servility of subservience which that great dramatist exacts from his typically virtuous women—­from the abject and anaemic wife of a Corvino or a Fitzdottrel—­is a quality which could not coexist with the noble and loving humility of Marston’s Beatrice.  The admirable scene in which she is brought face to face with the impudent pretentions of the woman who asserts herself to have been preferred by the betrothed lover of the expectant bride is as pathetic and impressive as it is lifelike and original; and even in the excess of gentleness and modesty which prompts the words, “I will love you the better; I cannot hate what he affected,” there is nothing less noble or less womanly than in the subsequent reply to the harlot’s repeated taunts and inventions of insult:  “He did not ill not to love me, but sure he did not well to mock me:  gentle minds will pity, though they cannot love; yet peace and my love sleep with him.”  The powerful soliloquy which closes the scene expresses no more than the natural emotion of the man who has received so lovely a revelation of his future bride’s invincible and single-hearted love: 

   Cannot that woman’s evil, jealousy,
   Despite disgrace, nay, which is worse, contempt,
   Once stir thy faith?

Coarse as is often the language of Marston’s plays and satires, the man was not coarse-minded—­not gross of spirit nor base of nature—­who could paint so delicately and simply a figure so beautiful in the tenderness of its purity.

The farcical underplot of this play is worthy of Moliere in his broader mood of farce.  Hardly any Jourdain or Pourceaugnac, any George Dandin or Comtesse d’Escarbagnas of them all, undergoes a more grotesque experience or plays a more ludicrous part than is devised for Mr. and Mrs. Mulligrub by the ingenuity of the indefatigable Cocledemoy—­a figure worthy to stand beside any of the tribe of Mascarille as fourbum imperator.  The animation and variety of inventive humor which keep the reader’s laughing attention awake and amused throughout these adventurous scenes of incident and intrigue are not more admirable than the simplicity and clearness of evolution or composition which recall and rival the classic masterpieces of Latin and French comedy.  There is perhaps equal fertility of humor, but there certainly is not equal harmony of structure