Had
Shakespeare lived in a later and less emotional, less heroical period of
our history, he might have turned to the painting of manners as well as
humanity. Euripides would probably, in the time of Menander, when Athens
was enslaved but prosperous, have lent his hand to the composition of
romantic comedy. He certainly inspired that fine genius.
Politically it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles
thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze. It was a boon to the comic poet.
He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule passions, the huge
pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes in full activity;
vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, posturers,
extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians, sonneteering
marquises, high-flying mistresses, plain-minded maids, inter-threading as
in a loom, noisy as at a fair. A simply bourgeois circle will not furnish
it, for the middle class must have the brilliant, flippant, independent
upper for a spur and a pattern; otherwise it is likely to be inwardly
dull as well as outwardly correct.
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