interesting and instructive. That his comedies, thus composed, are
besides amusing, results from the shrewdness with which he has selected
and combined his characters, and the art with which he arranges the
situations produced.

The character-comedies of Molière exhibit, more than any others, the
force of his natural genius, and the comparative weakness of his
artistic talent. In the exhibition and the evolution of character, he is
supreme. In the unravelling of his plots and the _dénouement_ of
his situations, he is driven too willingly to the _deus ex
machina_.

_The School for Husbands_ was directed against one of the special
and prominent defects of society in the age and country in which Molière
lived. Domestic tyranny was not only rife, but it was manifested in one
of its coarsest forms. Sganarelle, though twenty years younger than
Ariste, and not quite forty years old, could not govern by moral force;
he relied solely on bolts and bars. Physical restraint was the safeguard
in which husbands and parents had the greatest confidence, not
perceiving that the brain and the heart are always able to prevail
against it. This truth Molière took upon himself to preach, and herein
he surpasses all his rivals; in nothing more than in the artistic device
by which he introduces the contrast of the wise and trustful Ariste,
_raisonneur_ as he is called in French, rewarded in the end by the
triumph of his more humane mode of treatment. Molière probably expresses
his own feelings by the mouth of Ariste: for _The School for
Husbands_ was performed on the 24th of June, 1661, and about eight
months later, on the 20th of February, 1662, he married Armande Béjart,
being then about double her age. As to Sganarelle in this play, he
ceases to be a mere buffoon, as in some of Molière's farces, and becomes