Monsieur, the brother of the King, and the Queen of England; and by them
also was much approved. Some commentators say that Molière was partly
inspired by a comedy of Lope de Vega. _La Discreta enamorada_, The
Cunning Sweetheart; also by a remodelling of the same play by Moreto,
_No puede ser guardar una muger_, One cannot guard a woman; but
this has lately been disproved. It appears, however, that he borrowed
the primary idea of his comedy from the _Adelphi_ of Terence; and
from a tale, the third of the third day, in the Decameron of Boccaccio,
where a young woman uses her father-confessor as a go-between for
herself and her lover. In the _Adelphi_ there are two old men of
dissimilar character, who give a different education to the children
they bring up. One of them is a dotard, who, after having for sixty
years been sullen, grumpy and avaricious, becomes suddenly lively,
polite, and prodigal; this Molière had too much common sense to imitate.

_The School for Husbands_ marks a distinct departure in the
dramatist's literary progress. As a critic has well observed, it
substitutes for situations produced by the mechanism of plot, characters
which give rise to situations in accordance with the ordinary operations
of human nature. Molière's method--the simple and only true one, and,
consequently, the one which incontestably establishes the original
talent of its employer--is this: At the beginning of a play, he
introduces his principal personages: sets them talking; suffers them to
betray their characters, as men and women do in every-day
life,--expecting from his hearers that same discernment which he has
himself displayed in detecting their peculiarities: imports the germ of
a plot in some slight misunderstanding or equivocal act; and leaves all
the rest to be effected by the action and reaction of the characters
which he began by bringing out in bold relief. His plots are thus the
plots of nature; and it is impossible that they should not be both