References to animals, epithets that reduce men to the level of animals, anecdotes, proverbs, and allusions which assume that men and animals are in all respects alike, and appearances on stage of animals or of men disguised as animals have been staple ingredients of comedy from Aristophanes to Ionesco. Comedy rarely loses sight of the fact that human behavior has its animal aspects; farce uses it as a cornerstone of its madhouse. It is therefore only natural that the animal world should be represented in Molière comedy. It is not as generously represented, either in incident or in imagery, as it is in Shakespeare; no one is metamorphosed into a donkey from the shoulders up like Bottom, or dons a stag's horns like Falstaff; nor does any animal play a part as important as Citron in Racine's Les Plaideurs, the dog who is tried for stealing a roast and whose puppies, deposited in the lap of the judge in a desperate appeal to compassion, break up the proceedings by an ill-timed response to the call of nature. No animals make their presence felt so palpably in Molière. In fact, animals appear on stage only in his pastoral plays. But their frequent appearances in the dialogue illustrate the richness and variety of the resources which Molière brought to the task of writing comedy.