The reason is, that these two poets idealized upon life: the
foundation of their types is real and in the quick, but they painted with
spiritual strength, which is the solid in Art.
The idealistic conceptions of Comedy gives breadth and opportunities of
daring to Comic genius, and helps to solve the difficulties it creates.
How, for example, shall an audience be assured that an evident and
monstrous dupe is actually deceived without being an absolute fool? In Le
Tartuffe the note of high Comedy strikes when Orgon on his return home
hears of his idol's excellent appetite. 'Le pauvre homme!' he exclaims.
He is told that the wife of his bosom has been unwell. 'Et Tartuffe?' he
asks, impatient to hear him spoken of, his mind suffused with the thought
of Tartuffe, crazy with tenderness, and again he croons, 'Le pauvre
homme!' It is the mother's cry of pitying delight at a nurse's recital of
the feats in young animal gluttony of her cherished infant. After this
masterstroke of the Comic, you not only put faith in Orgon's roseate
prepossession, you share it with him by comic sympathy, and can listen
with no more than a tremble of the laughing muscles to the instance he
gives of the sublime humanity of Tartuffe:
'Un rien presque suffit pour le scandaliser, Jusque-le, qu'il se vint
l'autre jour accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de
l'avoir tuee avec trop de colere.
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