The characters of humor in Shakspeare promote the business of the play, but they do it as much by being special studies of the traits of human nature as by necessary complicity with the plot. Sometimes they appear, as they would to a Frenchman like Voltaire, to be absurdities interpolated in the texture of the plot as if merely to raise a laugh and stretch the mouths of the groundlings. The notion is not uncommon, even among cultivated people, that they are drolleries contrived to suspend the strain of the more serious portions of the play; the poet assuming that the average mind cannot bear gravity for a whole evening. And doubtless great numbers of spectators find this relief in the lighter scenes into which they step down the stairs of the blank verse, rather tired and strained. They only notice that they are amused. But the characters of humor flow out of a natural logic that is behind the plot, which cannot be apprehended without them. They are essential to it because they are intrinsically logical, however little they may appear to be woven along with the rest of the texture. But they are in fact, as all human life is, a seamless piece constructed at a single loom. Why for instance, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," does Launce enter, leading his dog, just after Proteus and Julia have exchanged rings, and they part, she too much overcome to respond to his tender farewell? What an impertinent soliloquy which describes Launce's parting, too, from his family to follow Proteus, all of them dissolved in tears except Crab the dog! What does this bit of vulgar life in such a connection? It introduces the essential vulgarity of Proteus himself, who, we shall see, has the remembrance of Julia driven out of his heart by Silvia as soon as he has turned his back. To obtain her he plays a mean trick upon his dearest friend who loves her. In the midst of this Launce intrudes again; for he has fallen in love, and gives us what he calls the "cat-log" of his girl's conditions. It is as if the trivial disposition of Proteus was suddenly dumped upon its proper refuse-heap by the fine verse which held it. And we soon perceive why this dog Crab was trotted into the company; for Proteus procures a dog of gentle breed and bids Launce carry it as a present to Silvia. But it is stolen from him, and Launce substitutes his own vicious cur who behaves badly in Silvia's presence, and is whipped out. This is just what Proteus is doing in love. Launce's shift is the shabbiness of Proteus, and Silvia dismisses it as summarily as she disposed of Crab; for she is not "so shallow, so conceitless," as to trust such a born flirt as Proteus. Shakspeare certainly has not left a shred of sentiment hanging to the back of Proteus's meanness; for Launce, who is a kind of choragus of it, is furnished with the most vigorous vulgarity which the vernacular contains. Especially we see what a satirical dog Crab is.