pursuing; and these interruptions to our pleasure too frequently occur, on occasions when we would least wish to meet with them. All these faults, however, Shakespeare redeems by two of the greatest excellencies which any Tragic Poet can possess; his lively and diversified paintings of character; his strong and natural expressions of passion. These are his two chief virtues; on these his merit rests. Notwithstanding his many absurdities, all the while we are reading his Plays, we find ourselves in the midst of our fellows; we meet with men vulgar perhaps in their manners, coarse or harsh in their sentiments, but still they are men; they speak with human voices, and are actuated by human passions; we are interested in what they say or do, because we feel that they are of the same nature with ourselves. It is therefore no matter of wonder, that from the more polished and regular, but more cold and artificial performances of other Poets, the Public should return with pleasure to such warm and genuine representations of human nature. Shakespeare possesses likewise the merit of having created, for himself, a sort of world of præternatural beings. His witches, ghosts, fairies, and spirits of all kinds, are described with such circumstances of awful and mysterious solemnity, and speak a language so peculiar to themselves, as strongly to affect the imagination. His two master-pieces, and in which, in my opinion, the strength of his genius chiefly appears, are Othello and Macbeth. With regard to his historical Plays, they are, properly speaking, neither Tragedies nor Comedies; but a peculiar species of Dramatic Entertainment, calculated to describe the manners of the times of which he treats, to exhibit the principal characters, and to fix our imagination on the most interesting events and revolutions of our own country.

After the age of Shakespeare, we can produce in the English language several detached Tragedies of considerable merit. But we have not many Dramatic Writers, whose whole works are entitled either to particular criticism, or very high praise. In the Tragedies of Dryden and Lee, there is much fire, but mixed with much fustian and rant. Lee's "Theodosius, or the Force of Love," is the best of his pieces, and in some of the scenes, does not want tenderness and warmth; though romantic in the plan, and extravagant in the sentiments. Otway was endowed with a high portion of the Tragic spirit; which appears to great advantage in his two principal Tragedies, "The Orphan," and "Venice Preserved." In these, he is perhaps too Tragic; the distresses being so deep as to tear and overwhelm the mind. He is a Writer, doubtless, of genius and strong passion; but, at the same time, exceedingly gross and indelicate. No Tragedies are less moral than those of Otway. There are no generous or noble sentiments

See an excellent defence of Shakespeare's Historical Plays, and several just observations on his peculiar excellencies as a Tragic Poet, in Mrs. Montague's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare.

in them; but a licentious spirit often discovers itself. He is the very opposite of the French decorum; and has contrived to introduce obscenity and indecent allusions, into the midst of deep Tragedy.

Rowe's Tragedies make a contrast to those of Otway. He is full of elevated and moral sentiments. The Poetry is often good, and the Language always pure and elegant; but, in most of his Plays, he is too cold and uninteresting; and flowery rather than tragic. Two, however, he has produced, which deserve to be exempted from this censure, Jane Shore and the Fair Penitent; in both of which, there are so many tender and truly pathetic scenes, as to render them justly favourites of the Public.

Dr. Young's Revenge is a play which discovers genius and fire; but wants tenderness, and turns too much upon the shocking and direful passions. In Congreve's Mourning Bride, there are some fine situations, and much good Poetry. The two first Acts are admirable. The meeting of Almeria with her husband Osmyn, in the tomb of Anselmo, is one of the most solemn and striking situations to be found in any Tragedy. The defects in the catastrophe, I pointed out in the last Lecture. Mr. Thomson's Tragedies are too full of a stiff morality, which renders them dull and formal. Tancred and Sigismunda far excels the rest; and for the plot, the characters and sentiments, justly deserve a place among the best English Tragedies. Of later pieces, and of living Authors, it is not my purpose

to treat.

Upon the whole, reviewing the Tragic Compositions of different nations, the following conclusions arise: A Greek Tragedy is the relation of any distressful or melancholy incident; sometimes the effect of passion or crime, oftener of the decree of the Gods, simply exposed; without much variety of parts or events, but naturally and beautifully set before us; heightened by the Poetry of the Chorus. A French Tragedy is a series of artful and refined conversations, founded upon a variety of tragical and interesting situations; carried on with little action and vehemence; but with much poetical beauty, and high propriety and decorum. An English Tragedy is the combat of strong passions, set before us in all their violence; producing deep disasters; often irregularly conducted; abounding in action and filling the Spectators with grief. The Ancient Tragedies were more natural and simple; the Modern are more artful and complex. Among the French there is more correctness; among the English, more fire. Andromaque and Zayre soften, Othello and Venice Preserved rend the heart. It deserves remark, that three of the greatest master-pieces of the French Tragic Theatre, turn wholly upon religious subjects: the Athalie of Racine, the Polyeucte of Corneille, and the Zayre of Voltaire. The first is founded upon a historical passage of the Old

Testament; in the other two, the distress arises from the zeal and attachment of the principal personages to the Christian faith; and in all the three, the Authors have, with much propriety, availed themselves of the majesty which may be derived from religious ideas.

LECTURE XLVII.

COMEDY.-GREEK AND ROMAN-FRENCH-ENGLISH

COMEDY.

COMEDY is sufficiently discriminated from Tragedy, by its general spirit and strain. While pity and terror, and the other strong passions, form the province of the latter, the chief, or rather sole instrument of the former, is ridicule. Comedy proposes for its object, neither the great sufferings, nor the great crimes of men; but their follies and slighter vices, those parts of their character, which raise in beholders a sense of impropriety, which expose them to be censured and laughed at by others, or which render them troublesome in civil society.

This general idea of Comedy, as a satirical exhibition of the improprieties and follies of mankind, is an idea very moral and useful. There is nothing in the nature, or general plan of this kind of Composition, that renders it liable to censure. To polish the manners of men, to promote attention to the proper decorums of social behaviour, and, above all, to render vice ridiculous, is doing a real service to the world. Many vices might be more successfully exploded, by employing ridicule against them, than by serious attacks and arguments. At the same time, it must be confessed, that ridicule is an instrument of such a nature, that when managed by unskilful, or improper hands, there is hazard of its doing mischief, instead of good to society. For ridicule is far from being, as some have maintained it to be, a proper test of truth. On the contrary, it is apt to mislead, and seduce, by the colours which it throws upon its objects; and it is often more difficult to judge, whether these colours be natural and proper, than it is to distinguish between simple truth and error. Licentious Writers, therefore, or the Comic class, have too often had it in their power to cast a ridicule upon characters and objects which did not deserve it. But this is a fault, not owing to the nature of Comedy, but to the genius and turn of the Writers of it. In the hands of a loose,

immoral Author, Comedy will mislead and corrupt; while, in those of a virtuous and well-intentioned one, it will be not only a gay and innocent, but a laudable and useful entertainment. French Comedy is an excellent school of manners; while English Comedy has been too often the school of vice.

The rules respecting the Dramatic Action, which I delivered in the first Lecture upon Tragedy, belong equally to Comedy; and hence, of course, our disquisitions concerning it are shortened. It is equally necessary to both these forms of Dramatic Composition, that there be a proper unity of action and subject, that the unities of time and place be, as much as possible, preserved; that is, that the time of the action be brought within reasonable bounds; and the place of the action never changed, at least, not during the course of each Act; that the several Scenes or successive conversations be properly linked together; that the Stage be never totally evacuated till the Act closes; and that the reason should appear to us, why the personages, who fill up the different Scenes, enter and go off the Stage, at the time when they are made to do so. The scope of all these rules, I showed, was to bring the imitation as near as possible to probability; which is always necessary, in order to any imitation giving us pleasure. This reason requires, perhaps, a stricter observance of the Dramatic rules in Comedy, than in Tragedy. For the action of Comedy being more familiar to us than that of Tragedy, more like what we are accustomed to see in common life, we judge more easily of what is probable, and are more hurt by the want of it. The probable and the natural, both in the conduct of the story, and in the characters and sentiments of the persons who are introduced, are the great foundation, it must always be remembered, of the whole beauty of Comedy.

The subjects of Tragedy are not limited to any country or to any age. The Tragic Poet may lay his Scene in whatever region he pleases. He may form his subject upon the history either of his own, or of a foreign country; and he may take it from any period that is agreeable to him, however remote in time. The reverse of this holds in Comedy, for a clear and obvious reason. In the great vices, great virtues, and high passions, men of all countries and ages resemble one another; and are therefore equally subjects for the Tragic Muse. But those decorums of behaviour, those lesser discriminations of character, which afford subject for Comedy, change with the differences of countries and times; and can never be so well understood by foreigners, as by natives. We weep for the heroes of Greece and Rome, as freely as we do for those of our own country; but we are touched with the ridicule of such manners and such characters only, as we see and know; and therefore the Scene and subject of Comedy should always be laid in our own country, and in our own times. The Comic Poet, who

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aims at correcting improprieties and follies of behaviour, should study" to catch the manners living as they rise." It is not his business to amuse us with a tale of the last age, or with a Spanish or a French intrigue; but to give us pictures taken from among ourselves; to satirize reigning and present vices; to exhibit to the age a faithful copy of itself, with its humours, its follies, and its extravagancies. It is only by laying his plan in this manner, that he can add weight and dignity to the entertainment which he gives us. Plautus, it is true, and

Terence, did not follow this rule. They laid the scene of their Comedies in Greece, and adopted the Greek laws and customs. But it must be remembered, that Comedy was, in their age, but a new entertainment in Rome; and that then they contented themselves with imitating, often with translating merely, the Comedies of Menander, and other Greek Writers. In aftertimes, it is known that the Romans had the "Comœdia Togata," or what was founded on their own manners, as well as the "Comœdia Palliata," or what was taken from the Greeks.

Comedy may be divided into two kinds; Comedy of Character, and Comedy of Intrigue. In the latter, the plot, or the action of the Play, is made the principal object. In the former, the display of some peculiar character is chiefly aimed at; the action is contrived altogether with a view to this end; and is treated as subordinate to it. The French abound most in Comedies of Character. All Moliere's capital pieces are of this sort; his Avare, for instance, Misanthrope, Tartuffe ; and such are Destouches's also, and those of the other chief French Comedians. The English abound more in Comedies of Intrigue. In the Plays of Congreve, and, in general, in all our Comedies, there is much more story, more bustle and action, than on the French Theatre.

In order to give this sort of Composition its proper advantage, these two kinds should be properly mixed together. Without some interesting and well-conducted story, mere conversation is apt to become insipid. There should be always as much intrigue, as to give us something to wish, and something to fear. The incidents should so succeed one another, as to produce striking situations, and to fix our attention; while they afford at the same time a proper field for the exhibition of character. For the Poet must never forget, that to exhibit characters and manners is his principal object. The action in Comedy, though it demands his care, in order to render it animated and natural, is a less significant and important part of the performance, than the action in Tragedy: as in Comedy, it is what men say, and how they behave, that draws our attention, rather than what they perform, or what they suffer. Hence it is a great fault to overcharge it with too much intrigue, and those intricate Spanish plots that were fashionable for a while, carried on by perplexed