Neither my duly unqualified love for the greater
poet nor my duly qualified regard for the less can alter my sense that
their mutual relations are in this one case inverted; that _Every Man in
his Humour_ is altogether a better comedy and a work of higher art than
the _Merry Wives of Windsor_. Kitely is to Ford almost what Arnolphe is
to Sganarelle. (As according to the learned Metaphraste "Filio non
potest praeferri nisi filius," even so can no one but Moliere be
preferred or likened to Moliere.) Without actually touching like
Arnolphe on the hidden springs of tragedy, the jealous husband in
Jonson's play is only kept from trenching on the higher and forbidden
grounds of passion by the potent will and the consummate self-command of
the great master who called him up in perfect likeness to the life.
Another or a deeper tone, another or a stronger touch, in the last two
admirable scenes with his cashier and his wife, when his hot smouldering
suspicion at length catches fire and breaks out in agony of anger, would
have removed him altogether beyond the legitimate pale of comedy.
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