A passage in Massinger bears a striking resemblance with one in Moliere’s “Malade Imaginaire.”  It is in “The Emperor of the East,” vol. iii. 317.  The Quack or “Empiric’s” humorous notion is so closely that of Moliere’s, that Mr. Gifford, agreeing with Mr. Gilchrist, “finds it difficult to believe the coincidence accidental;” but the greater difficulty is, to conceive that “Massinger ever fell into Moliere’s hands.”  At that period, in the infancy of our literature, our native authors and our own language were as insulated as their country.  It is more than probable that Massinger and Moliere had drawn from the same source—­the Italian Comedy.  Massinger’s “Empiric,” as well as the acknowledged copy of Moliere’s “Medecin,” came from the “Dottore” of the Italian Comedy.  The humour of these old Italian pantomimes was often as traditionally preserved as proverbs.  Massinger was a student of Italian authors; and some of the lucky hits of their theatre, which then consisted of nothing else but these burlesque comedies, might have circuitously reached the English bard; and six-and-thirty years afterwards, the same traditional jests might have been gleaned by the Gallic one from the “Dottore,” who was still repeating what he knew was sure of pleasing.  Our theatres of the Elizabethan period seem to have had here the extemporal comedy after the manner of the Italians; we surely possess one of these Scenarios, in the remarkable “Platts,” which were accidentally discovered at Dulwich College, bearing every feature of an Italian Scenario.  Steevens calls them “a mysterious fragment of ancient stage direction,” and adds, that “the paper describes a species of dramatic entertainment of which no memorial is preserved in any annals of the English stage."[53] The commentators on Shakspeare appear not to have known the nature of these Scenarios.  The “Platt,” as it is called, is fairly written in a large hand, containing directions appointed to be stuck up near the prompter’s station; and it has even an oblong hole in its centre to admit of being suspended on a wooden peg.  Particular scenes are barely ordered, and the names, or rather nicknames, of several of the players, appear in the most familiar manner, as they were known to their companions in the rude green-room of that day:  such as “Pigg, White and Black Dick and Sam, Little Will Barne, Jack Gregory, and the Red-faced fellow."[54] Some of these “Platts” are on solemn subjects, like the tragic pantomime; and in some appear “Pantaloon, and his man Peascod, with spectacles.”  Steevens observes, that he met with no earlier example of the appearance of Pantaloon, as a specific character on our stage; and that this direction concerning “the spectacles” cannot fail to remind the reader of a celebrated passage in As You Like It: 

    ——­The lean and slipper’d Pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose——.