“so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any of these common noises.”  He has mattresses on the stairs, and he dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes.  For a long time Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife’s tongue.  Finally he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations which this turn in the action affords.  Dryden preferred The Silent Woman to any of the other plays.

Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.

Marks of Decline.—­A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in Jonson’s plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare.  We may change Jonson’s line so that it will state one reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:—­

  “He was not for all time, but of an age.”

His first play, Every Man in his Humor, paints, not the universal emotions of men, but some special humor.  He thus defines the sense in which he uses humor:—­

  “As when some one peculiar quality
  Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
  All his affects, his spirits and his powers,
  In their confluctions, all to run one way,
  This may be truly said to be a Humor.”

Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson gives a distorted or incomplete picture of life.  In Volpone everything is subsidiary to the humor of avarice, which receives unnatural emphasis.  In The Alchemist there is little to relieve the picture of credibility and hypocrisy, while The Silent Woman has for its leading character a man whose principal “humor” or aim in life is to avoid noise.

No drama which fails to paint the nobler side of womanhood can be called complete.  In Jonson’s plays we do not find a single woman worthy to come near the Shakespearean characters, Cordelia, Imogen, and Desdemona.  His limitations are nowhere more marked than in his inability to portray a noble woman.

Another reason why he fails to present life completely is shown in these lines, in which he defines his mission:—­

  “My strict hand
  Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe
  Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls
  As lick up every idle vanity.”

Since the world needs building up rather than tearing down, a remedy for an ailment rather than fault-finding, the greatest of men cannot be mere satirists.  Shakespeare displays some fellow feeling for the object of his satire, but Jonson’s satire is cold and devoid of sympathy.

Jonson deliberately took his stand in opposition to the romantic spirit of the age.  Marlowe and Shakespeare had disregarded the classical unities and had developed the drama on romantic lines.  Jonson resolved to follow classical traditions and to adhere to unity of time and place in the construction of his plots.  The action in the play of The Silent Woman, for instance, occupies only twelve hours.