in Dealer explain Gassner's comment that The Plain Dealer is "a slashing adaptation of Moliere's The Misanthrope, lacking the latter play's subtlety but possessing a power of its own" (Gassner 1:1023). The assessment of the dark tone of The Plain Dealer marks most of the criticism of the play. Weales refers to Wycherley's gossip scene as "much harsher in tone" (Weales 374) than its counterpart in Mis. Matthews also notes the change in tone from Moliere to Wycherley when he remarks that "in its form, if not in its spirit, the comedy of Wycherley and of Congreve is taken from the comedy of Moliere" (Matthews 359). Waith notes the satire of the litigation subplot in the play but says that "the main plot sometimes becomes so bitter that it has tragic overtones" (Waith 661). MacMillan and Jones (898) summarize the shift from Moliere to Wycherley:
If Le Misanthrope suffers from thinness of plot, that of The
Plain Dealer suffers by the uneven distribution of events over
the play, the end being especially huddled together, but
...