The Miser: A Comedy (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Miser: A Comedy

For our own parts we do not see that comic authors should play the divines, or that a comedy should be a les son of morality; if, however the law is a good one - andit has been so decided,-the Miser must he certainly con damned, with many of his more worthy brethren; the ava rice of Lovegold is no excuse for the havery of. His son and daughter,' and the treachery of Mariana; that he is a villain, does not make them more honest, and after all it is only the triumph of many young rogues over one old one, who succeed by lying, cheating, and even down-right robbery. 0 There is also another great defect in this piece; the speech of each individual bears no distinctive mark; there is a peculiar impress which peculiarity of habit lands to language, by which every sort, or at least, class of charac ter, has its own dialect, as certain and as distinct as the dialects of Ireland and Scotland, or the patois of Venice and we invariably find our old poets - Shakspeare more particularly-attentive to this maxim. The dialects of N ym, Bardolph, and Falstafi', are as difl'erent from each other as from the dialect of Greece or Rome! Nay, even Shallow, though so nearly allied in nature and habits, is yet, in this respect, suficiently distinguished. It must, however, he allowed, that this excellence is extremely rare since the decay of the great English School, and the want of it therefore must be lightly visited in Fielding.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.