‘May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing? Doth there breathe such an egregious ass? Is there such a foolish animal in _rerum natura_? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us not lose our laughing at him, for God’s sake; let folly’s sceptre light upon him, and to the ship of fools with him instantly. _Dondolo._ Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’ Molière has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is not much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of satire, has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, who were ‘full of wise saws and modern instances.’ Thus he freights his Ship of Fools: ‘_Dondolo._ Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go: there’s none left now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus’ verses; another has vowed to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing. _Hercules._ But what philosophers ha’ ye? _Dondolo._ Oh very strange fellows; one knows nothing, dares not aver he lives, goes, sees, feels. _Nymphadoro._ A most insensible philosopher. _Dondolo._ Another, that there is no present time; and that one man to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man; so that he that yesterday owed money, to-day owes none; because he is not the same man. _Herod._ Would that philosophy hold good in law? _Hercules._ But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the fools shipped out of his dominions? _Dondolo._ Marry, because he would play the fool alone without any rival.’ _Act IV._ Molière has enlarged upon the same topic in his _Mariage Forcé_, but not with more point or effect. Nymphadoro’s reasons for devoting himself to the sex generally, and Hercules’s description of the different qualifications of different men, will also be found to contain excellent specimens, both of style and matter.—The disguise of Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed voluntarily, and he is comparatively a calm and dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole’s disguise in the Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpation and injustice, and his invectives are accordingly more impassioned and virulent. His satire does not ‘like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of any man,’ but has a bitter and personal application. Take him in the words of the usurping Duke’s account of him.