Quickly which put in (so to
speak) a nominal reappearance in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ are
comparatively as poor and thin if set over against the full rich outlines
of Rabbi Busy and Dame Purecraft as these again are at all points alike
inferior to the real Shallow and the genuine Quickly of _King Henry IV_.
It is true that Jonson's humour has sometimes less in common with
Shakespeare's than with the humour of Swift, Smollett, and Carlyle. For
all his admiration and even imitation of Rabelais, Shakespeare has hardly
once or twice burnt but so much as a stray pinch of fugitive incense on
the altar of Cloacina; the only Venus acknowledged and adored by those
three latter humourists. If not always constant with the constancy of
Milton to the service of Urania, he never turns into a dirtier byway or
back alley than the beaten path trodden occasionally by most of his kind
which leads them on a passing errand of no unnatural devotion to the
shrine of Venus Pandemos.
When, however, we turn from the raw rough sketch to the enriched and
ennobled version of the present play we find it in this its better shape
more properly comparable with another and a nobler work of Jonson's--with
that magnificent comedy, the first avowed and included among his
collection by its author, which according to all tradition first owed its
appearance and success to the critical good sense and generous good
offices of Shakespeare.
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