Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/117

Rh necessary to create living and interesting characters. And yet one feels these comedies were not written—like those of Aristophanes or like The Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels—because Jonson desired to satirise some vice or folly which had moved his spleen. He is a satirist because he has resolved to write satiric comedy. Only perhaps in the character of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy does one seem to see a type that Jonson has met himself and spontaneously detested. The others are the product of a learned and observant mind, and a definite and pedantic theory of comic art.

Volpone, or the Fox, for example, is not a satiric comedy springing directly from the poet's observation of the love of gold and the ways of legacy-hunters in his own day. The root idea—the shameless greed of such people, and the exploitation of this greed by a clever knave—is derived from Petronius Arbiter, and the whole play is a marvellously inventive and artistic elaboration of this idea. From it, with the help of a further hint or two from Petronius and other sources, Jonson has evolved a comedy full of powerfully drawn and impressive characters, striking and ludicrous incidents, learned and poetical sentiment, and breathing such a sincere spirit of scornful indignation as almost to give the impression that he is modelling directly from life. Almost, but not quite—and the final impression is rather of a wonderful tour de force than of a really penetrating and effective piece of satire.

The Silent Woman is constructed in a similar