Jonson's comedies were modeled upon the _vetus comaedia_ of Aristophanes, which was satirical in purpose, and they belonged to an entirely different school from Shakspere's. They were classical and not romantic, and were pure comedies, admitting no admixture of tragic motives. There is hardly one lovely or beautiful character in the entire range of his dramatic creations. They were comedies not of character, in the high sense of the word, but of manners or humors. His design was to lash the follies and vices of the day, and his _dramatis personae_ consisted for the most part of gulls, impostors, fops, cowards, swaggering braggarts, and "Pauls men." In his first play, _Every Man in his Humor_ (acted in 1598), in _Every Man Out of his Humor, Bartholomew Fair_, and, indeed, in all of his comedies, his subject was the fashionable affectations, the whims, oddities, and eccentric developments of London life. His procedure was to bring together a number of these fantastic humorists, and "squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls," by playing them off upon each other, involving them in all manner of comical misadventures, and rendering them utterly ridiculous and contemptible. There was thus a perishable element in his art, for manners change; and, however effective this exposure of contemporary affectations may have been before an audience of Jonson's day, it is as hard for a modern reader to detect his points as it will be for a reader two hundred years hence to understand the satire upon the aesthetic craze in such pieces of the present day as _Patience_, or the _Colonel_. Nevertheless, a patient reader, with the help of copious footnotes, can gradually put together for himself an image of that world of obsolete humors in which Jonson's comedy dwells, and can admire the dramatist's solid good sense, his great learning, his skill in construction, and the astonishing fertility of his invention. His characters are not revealed from within, like Shakspere's, but built up painfully from outside by a succession of minute, laborious particulars. The difference will be plainly manifest if such a character as Slender, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, be compared with any one of the inexhaustible variety of idiots in Jonson's plays; with Master Stephen, for example, in _Every Man in his Humor_; or, if Falstaff be put side by side with Captain Bobadil, in the same comedy, perhaps Jonson's masterpiece in the way of comic caricature. _Cynthia's Revels_ was a satire on the courtiers and the _Poetaster_ on Jonson's literary enemies. The _Alchemist_ was an exposure of quackery, and is one of his best comedies, but somewhat overweighted with learning. _Volpone_ is the most powerful of all his dramas, but is a harsh and disagreeable piece; and the state of society which it depicts is too revolting for comedy. The _Silent Woman_ is, perhaps, the easiest of all Jonson's plays for a modern reader to follow and appreciate.