nd was the temper of mind of the prose-writer. His
worldly wisdom, his active philosophy, the very mainspring of his plots,
are found, characteristically, in his valets and his servant-maids. He
satirises the miser, the hypocrite, the bas-bleu, but he chuckles over
Frosine and Gros-Rene; he loves them for their freedom of speech and
their elastic minds, ready in words or deeds. They are his chorus, if
the chorus might be imagined as directing the action.

But Moliere has a weakness, too, for the bourgeois, and he has made M.
Jourdain immortally delightful. There is not a really cruel touch in the
whole character; we laugh at him so freely because Moliere lets us
laugh with such kindliness. M. Jourdain has a robust joy in life; he
carries off his absurdities by the simple good faith which he puts into
them. When I speak of M. Jourdain I hardly know whether I am speaking of
the character of Moliere or of the character of Coquelin. Probably there
is no difference. We get Moliere's vast, succulent farce of the
intellect rendered with an art like his own. If this, in every detail,
is not what Moliere meant, then so much the worse for Moliere.

Moliere is kind to his bourgeois, envelops him softly in satire as in
cotton-wool, dandles him like a great baby; and Coquelin is without
bitterness, stoops to make stupidity heroic, a distinguished stupidity.
A study in comedy so profound, so convincing, so full of human nature
and of the art-concealing art of the stage, has not been seen in our
time. As Mascarille, in "Les Precieuses Ridicules," Coquelin becomes
delicate and extravagant, a scented whirlwind; his parody is more
splendid than the thing itself which he parodies, more full of fine
show and nimble bravery. There is beauty in this broadly comic acting,
the beauty of subtle detail. Words can do little to define a performance
which is a constant series of little movements of the face, little
intonations of the voice, a way of lolling in the chair, a way of
speaking, of singing, of preserving the gravity of burlesque. In
"Tartuffe" we get a form of comedy which is almost tragic, the horribly
serious comedy of the hypocrite. Coquelin, who remakes his face, as by a
prolonged effort of the muscles, for every part, makes, for this part, a
great fish's face, heavy, suppressed, with lowered eyelids and a secret
mouth, out of which steals at times some stealthy avowal. He has the
movements of a great slug, or of a snail, if you will