sympathy and irony

I found this footnote about Shakespeare's character Falstaff in Burke's "Four Master Tropes".

I would consider Falstaff a gloriously ironic conception because we are so at one with him in his vices, while he himself embodies his vices in a mode of identification or brotherhood that is all but religious.  Falstaff would not simply rob a man, from without.  He identifies himself with the victim of a theft; he represents the victim.  He would not crudely steal a purse; rather, he joins forces with the owner of the purse -- and it is only when the harsh realities of this imperfect world have imposed a brutally divisive clarity upon the situation, that Falstaff is left holding the purse.  He produces a new quality, a state of synthesis or merger -- and it so happens that, when this synthesis is finally dissociated again into its analytic components (the crudities of the realm of practical property relationships having reduced this state of qualitative merger to a state of quantitative division), the  issue as so simplified sums up to the fact that the purse has changed hands.  He converts "thine" into "ours" -- and it is "circumstances over which he has no control" that go to convert this "ours" into a "mine."  A mere thief would have directly converted "thine" into "mine."  It is the addition of these intermediate steps that makes the vital difference between a mere thief and Falstaff; for it is precisely these intermediate steps that mark him with a conviviality, a sociality, essentially religious -- and in this sympathetic distortion of religious values resides the irony of his conception.

We might bring out the point sharply by contrasting Falstaff with Tartuffe.  Tartuffe, like Falstaff, exploits the coöperative values for competitive ends.  He too would convert "thine" into "mine" by putting it through the social alembic of "ours."  But the conception of Tartuffe is not ironic, since he is pure hypocrite.  He uses the religious values simply as a swindler.  Tartuffe's piety, which he uses to gain the confidence of his victims, is a mere deception.  Whereas Tartuffe is all competition and merely simulates the sentiments of coöperation, Falstaff is genuinely coöperative, sympathetic, a synecdochic part of his victim -- but along with such rich gifts of identification, what is to prevent a purse from changing hands?

This "essentially religious" character looks like something that would be of interest as an example for talking about "symphatic".