sketch as Shakespeare's Malvolio. Who would have foreseen Malvolio's
exquisitely preposterous address to Jove? In Tartufe there are no such
surprises. He displays three qualities, and three only--religious
hypocrisy, lasciviousness, and the love of power; and there is not a
word that he utters which is not impregnated with one or all of these.
Beside the vast elaboration of a Falstaff he seems, at first sight,
hardly more solid than some astounding silhouette; yet--such was the
power and intensity of Molière's art--the more we look, the more
difficult we shall find it to be certain that Tartufe is a less
tremendous creation even than Falstaff himself.

For, indeed, it is in his characters that Molière's genius triumphs
most. His method is narrow, but it is deep. He rushes to the essentials
of a human being--tears out his vitals, as it were--and, with a few
repeated master-strokes, transfixes the naked soul. His flashlight never
fails: the affected fop, the ignorant doctor, the silly tradesman, the
heartless woman of fashion--on these, and on a hundred more, he turns
it, inexorably smiling, just at the compromising moment; then turns it
off again, to leave us with a vision that we can never forget. Nor is it
only by its vividness that his portraiture excels. At its best it rises
into the region of sublimity, giving us new visions of the grandeur to
which the human spirit can attain. It is sometimes said that the essence
of Molière lies in his common sense; that his fundamental doctrine is
the value of moderation, of the calm average outlook of the sensible man
of the world--_l'honnête homme_. And no doubt this teaching is to be
found throughout his work, devoted as it is, by its very nature, to the
eccentricities and exaggerations which beset humanity. But if he had
been nothing more than a sober propounder of the golden mean he never
would have come to greatness. No man realized more clearly the
importance of good sense; but he saw farther than that: he looked into