The impropriety, and indecorum of demeanour in his favourite characters, as in Bertoldo in the
Maid of Honour
, who is a swaggerer, talking to his sovereign what no sovereign could endure, and to gentlemen what no gentleman would answer without pulling his nose.
4.
Shakspeare's Ague-cheek, Osric, &c. are displayed through others, in the course of social intercourse, by the mode of their performing some office in which they are employed; but Massinger's
Sylli
come forward to declare themselves fools
ad arbitrium auctoris,
and so the diction always needs the
subintelligitur