Although it is not superior in technique to _Roister_ or _Gammer Gurton_, it is more distinctively polytypic than either. It is, also, of broader ethical significance. But this dominant didactic intent renders it less of a comedy than they, and much less than the _Jacob and Esau_--which is as good a representative of the fusion of dramatic kinds and qualities as the _Misogonus_, and a better specimen of workmanship. The simpler characters of the _Misogonus_, Codrus, poore, but "trwe and trusty"; the stammering Madge Mumbelcrust, who "coude once a said our lordyes saw--saw--sawter by rote"; and her gossip "Tib, who has tongue inough for both"; Alison, who knows "what a great thinge an oth is"; and Sir John, the priest, who knows how to use one,--these, their ways and colloquies, are of a piece with Stevenson's work and Heywood's and the world that their work represents. The conditions and conduct of the leading _dramatis personæ_ are, on the other hand, more closely akin to the Plautine and Terentian, to the school of Udall and the humanists. Cacurgus, the domestic parasite and fool, remotely connected with the Vice, but actually a counterfeit-simple and wag, is as good a Will Summer as the early comedy can boast. When Greene made his Nano, Adam, and Slipper, he had in mind a generation of such creatures. If one could eliminate the sermonizing, there would remain a plot as satisfactory in unity, in situations, recognitions, crises, and _denouement_ as any produced during the next twenty years. But, as I have said above, the moral urgency of the play injures the art. Since the Prodigal Son is reclaimed, we are, however, justified in ranking the production among early attempts at English comedy.