a little lower, he is kept busy by his wife, trying to mend a leaky
bucket with wax. Surely never did a scene contain more 'asides' than are
uttered and explained away by the crushed husband! Finally overtaxed
endurance asserts itself, and wife and priest are driven out of doors;
but the play closes with a very pronounced note of uncertainty from the
victor as to what new game the vanquished may shortly be at if he be not
there to see.

The all-important feature to be noticed in Heywood's work is that here
we have the drama escaping from its alliance with religion into the
region of pure comedy. Here is no well planned moral, no sententious
mouthpiece of abstract excellence, no ruin of sinners and crowning of
saints. Here, too, is no Vice, no Devil, although they are the chief
media for comedy in other Interludes, nor is there any buffoonery; even
of its near cousins, scuffling and fighting, only one of the three plays
has more than a trace. Hence the earlier remark, that Heywood was before
his time. It is not devils in bearskins and wooden-sworded vices that
create true comedy; they belong to the realm of farce. Yet they
continued to flourish long after Heywood had set another example, and
with them the cuffing of ears and drunken gambolling which we may see,
in the works of other men, trying to rescue prosy scenes from dullness.
In _Johan Johan_ is simple comedy, the comedy of laughter-raising
dialogue and 'asides'. We do not say it is perfect comedy, far from it;
but it is comedy cleared of its former alloys. It is the comedy which
Shakespeare refined for his own use in _Twelfth Night_ and elsewhere.

[Footnote 34: Translation by W.C. Robinson, Ph.D. (Bohn's Standard
Library).]

[Footnote 35: aright.]