Restoration comedy up to about 1696, while it was essentially a native development, was influenced both in technique and in content by the drama to which the court had been accustomed in its exile in France. The Jonsonian comedy was developing both in the period immediately preceding the Commonwealth and during the Restoration into the same sort of thing that we have here, and Shadwell, poet laureate and especial favorite of Queen Mary, definitely took the work of Jonson as his model. The Jonsonian satire had thrown emphasis on fundamental traits of human nature, but in this later type satire is centered on manners, dress, the non-essential elements of life, though the characters continue to be embodiments of single traits. Molière, whose earliest effective follower in England was Etherege, taught the English writers of the comedy of manners to aim at polish, refinement of style and dialogue, and his influence confirmed the tendency of English comedy to follow the unities as they were then understood. Restoration comedy, then, is native Jonsonian comedy, influenced by the comedy of Molière.[67] The chief literary sources of its plots are the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Molière, of Corneille, and Spanish comedies and novels. Though the late Elizabethans had been gross in word, there had always been in their work a tendency to punish vice and reward virtue, or at least to make vice ridiculous. But in the Restoration this grossness becomes grossness of word, character, and idea, and it is not the violator of virtue that is made ridiculous, but his victim. The Elizabethan gaiety, spontaneity, healthy overflow of spirits, become a cynicism which is absurd in its artificiality and deliberate pose. The Jonsonian reaction from earlier Elizabethan romanticism continues its advance toward realism. The Restoration dramatist lacks the power to construct effective plots. He is able to handle his separate incidents with skill, but when it comes to sustaining an action through five acts, he fails. His chief fault lies in too great intricacy, excessive elaboration, and complexity, which are due to his endeavor to tell too many stories. In the construction of his plays he commonly takes two, and sometimes three, plays from Molière, or Beaumont and Fletcher, to form one play of his own. Hence there is in the handling of the plot a lack of unity. Furthermore, in his extreme elaboration of single situations, which one must admit have qualities to make them lively and interesting on the stage, the dramatist fails in the great essential quality of probability; if one regards the unity of time, he makes his stories impossible. Lack of sequence is caused by the constant interruption of conversation, which is brilliant and entertaining in itself, but has nothing to do with the story.