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our author conclude the subject? Re- the musical dramas of Metastasio? peat the distinguishing characters of For what are they eminent; and in the Greek tragedy, which have been what do they abound? Of the dialogue, mentioned. From what were most of what is observed? What remark foltheir plots taken? What instances are lows? To speak of what do we now progiven? What does Eschylus exhibit? ceed; and what is their general chaWhat are his characteristics? Why is racter? As the pathetic is the soul of he obscure and difficult? With what tragedy, what follows? What is the does he abound; what does he possess; first object which presents itself to us, and in what does he delight? What on the English theatre? What are are beautiful in their kind, and strongly his merits; and what are his faults? expressive of his genius? What is said What are his two chief virtues? How of Sophocles? What evidence have we is this illustrated? What, therefore, is of the eminence of his descriptive ta- no matter of wonder? What merit lent? How does he compare with Eu- does Shakspeare likewise possess? ripides? What merits do they both pos- How is this illustrated? Which are his sess, as tragic poets? Of theatrical two masterpieces? Of his historical representation on the stages of Greece plays, what is observed? After the age and Rome, what is observed? What of Shakspeare, what can we produce; has the Abbé du Bos proved? What but what have we not? Of Dryden and has he farther attempted to prove? Of Lee, and of Lee's Theodosius, what is the actors in tragedy, what is obser- observed? With what was Otway enved? What is said of these masks? dowed, and where does it appear to When different emotions were to ap-great advantage? Of these, what is pear in the same person, how was the farther remarked? What does he poschange expressed? With what disad-sess? In what does his want of moralivantages was this contrivance attend- ty appear; of what is he the opposite; ed? In defence of them, what, at the and what has he contrived to do? How same time, must be remembered? In do Rowe's tragedies compare with those whose hands has tragedy appeared of Otway? To this remark, what two with much lustre and dignity? How exceptions are there; and what is said have they improved upon the ancients? of them? What is said of Dr. Young's In what have they studied to imitate Revenge; and of Congreve's Mourn them? To what are they attentive? ing Bride? Of Mr. Thompson's trageIn them, what is an English taste most dies, what is remarked? Which far exapt to censure? How is this defect il-cels the rest, and what is said of it? lustrated? What does Voltaire admit; On reviewing the tragic compositions and what does he very candidly give of different nations, what conclusions as his judgment? By what is Cor- arise? In what did the ancients and in neille distinguished? Of his genius, what do the moderns excel? How do what is observed; and why? How does the French and the English compare ; he compare with other French trage- and what illustration follows? What dians? What did he write; and in deserves remark; and on what are they what, also, did he resemble them? respectively founded? What has he composed; and which are his best? How does Racine compare with Corneille? Of his tenderness, what is observed; and of what performances, what is remarked? What is said of his language and versification? In what has he excelled all the French authors? What evidence of this is given; and what is said of it? Upon whose plans has Racine formed two of his plays; and of them, what is remarked? Of Voltaire, what is observed? In what has he outdone them all? From what is he not exempt; but how are his characters drawn? Which are four excellent tragedies? In the strains of his sentiments, what do we unexpectedly find? What is said of

1. Tragedy.

2.

3.

4.

ANALYSIS.

A. The characters.

a. Aristotle's observations on them.
b. The subjects of Greek tragedies.
c. Love predominant on the modern
stage.

B. The sentiments.

a. The natural language of passion to be observed.

b. Moral reflections considered.

c. The style and versification.

a. The disadvantages of French rhyme.

Greek tragedy.

A. Eschylus-Sophocles-Euripides.

B. Peculiarities in the representation.

French tragedy.

A. Corneille-Kacine-Voltaire.

English tragedy.

A. Shakspeare-Dryden-Otway, &c.

5. The conclusion.

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 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, of 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

affected an air to the piece. This is become too common a resource of comic writers, in order to heighten their characters, and display them to more advantage. As soon as the violent and impatient person arrives upon the stage, the spectator knows that, in the next scene, he is to be contrasted with the mild and good-natured man; or if one of the lovers introduced be remarkably gay and airy, we are sure that his companion is to be a grave and serious lover; like Frankly and Bellamy, Clarinda and Jacintha, in Dr. Hoadly's Suspicious Husband. Such production of characters by pairs, is like the employment of the figure antithesis in discourse, which, as I formerly observed, gives brilliancy indeed upon occasions, but is too apparently a rhetorical artifice. In every sort of composition, the perfection of art is to conceal art. A masterly writer will, therefore, give us his characters, distinguished rather by such shades of diversity as are commonly found in society, than marked with such strong oppositions, as are rarely brought into actual contrast in any of the circumstances of life.

The style of comedy ought to be pure, elegant, and lively; very seldom rising higher than the ordinary tone of polite conversation, and, upon no occasion, descending into vulgar, mean, and gross expressions. Here the French rhyme, which in many of their comedies they have preserved, occurs as an unnatural bondage. Certainly, if prose belongs to any composition whatever, it is to that which imitates the conversation of men in ordinary life. One of the most difficult circumstances in writing comedy, and one, too, upon which the success of it very much depends, is to maintain, throughout, a current of easy, genteel, unaffected dialogue, without pertness and flippancy; without too much studied and unseasonable wit; without dulness and formality. Too few of our English comedies are distinguished for this happy turn of conversation; most of them are liable to one or other of the exceptions I have mentioned. The Careless Husband, and, perhaps, we may add the Provoked Husband, and the Suspicious Husband, seem to have more merit than most of them, for easy and natural dialogue.

These are the chief observations that occur to me, concerning the general principles of this species of dramatic writing, as distinguished from tragedy. But its nature and spirit will be still better understood, by a short history of its progress; and a view of the manner in which it has been carried on by authors of different nations.

Tragedy is generally supposed to have been more ancient among the Greeks than comedy. We have fewer lights concerning the origin and progress of the latter. What is most probable is, that, like the other, it took its rise accidentally from the diversions peculiar to the feast of Bacchus, and from Thespis and his cart: till, by degrees, it diverged into an entertainment of a quite different nature from solemn and heroic tragedy. Critics distinguish three stages of comedy among the Greeks; which they call the ancient, the middle, and the new.

The ancient comedy consisted in direct and avowed satire against particular known persons, who were brought upon the stage by

name. Of this nature are the plays of Aristophanes, eleven of which are still extant; plays of a very singular nature, and wholly different from all compositions which have, since that age, borne the name of comedy. They show what a turbulent and licentious republic that of Athens was, and what unrestrained scope the Athenians gave to ridicule, when they could suffer the most illustrious personages of their state, their generals, and their magistrates, Cleon, Lamachus, Nicias, Alcibiades, not to mention Socrates the philosopher, and Euripides the poet, to be publicly made the subject of comedy. Several of Aristophanes' plays are wholly political satires upon public management, and the conduct of generals and statesmen, during the Peloponnesian war. They are so full of political allegories and allusions, that it is impossible to understand them without a considerable knowledge of the history of those times. They abound, too, with parodies of the great tragic poets, particularly of Euripides; to whom the author bore much enmity, and has written two comedies, almost wholly in order to ridicule him.

Vivacity, satire, and buffoonery, are the characteristics of Aristophanes. Genius and force he displays upon many occasions; but his performances, upon the whole, are not calculated to give us any high opinion of the Attic taste of wit, in his age. They seem, indeed, to have been composed for the mob. The ridicule employed in them is extravagant; the wit, for the most part, buffoonish and farcical; the personal raillery, biting and cruel; and the obscenity that reigns in them, is gross and intolerable. The treatment given by this comedian, to Socrates the philosopher, in his play of 'The Clouds,' is well known; but however it might tend to disparage Socrates in the public esteem, P. Brumoy, in his Théatre Grec, makes it appear, that it could not have been, as is commonly supposed, the cause of decreeing the death of that philosopher, which did not happen till twenty-three years after the representation of Aristophanes' Clouds. There is a chorus in Aristophanes' plays; but altogether of an irregular kind. It is partly serious, partly comic; sometimes mingles in the action, sometimes addresses the spectators, defends the author, and attacks his enemies.

Soon after the days of Aristophanes, the liberty of attacking persons on the stage by name, being found of dangerous consequence to the public peace, was prohibited by law. The chorus also was, at this period, banished from the comic theatre, as having been an instrument of too much license and abuse. Then, what is called the middle comedy, took rise; which was no other than an elusion of the law. Fictitious names, indeed, were employed; but living persons were still attacked; and described in such a manner as to be sufficiently known. Of these comic pieces, we have no remains. To them succeeded the new comedy; when the stage being obliged to desist wholly from personal ridicule, became, what it is now, the picture of manners and characters, but not of particular persons. Menander was the most distinguished author, of this kind, among the Greeks; and both from the imitations of him by Terence, and

the account given of him by Plutarch, we have much reason to regret that his writings have perished; as he appears to have reformed, in a very high degree, the public taste, and to have set the model of correct, elegant, and moral comedy.

The only remains which we now have of the new comedy, among the ancients, are the plays of Plautus and Terence; both of whom were formed upon the Greek writers. Plautus is distinguished for very expressive language, and a great degree of the vis comica. As he wrote in an early period, he bears several marks of the rudeness of the dramatic art among the Romans, in his time. He opens his plays with prologues, which sometimes pre-occupy the subject of the whole piece. The representation too, and the action of the comedy, are sometimes confounded; the actor departing from his character and addressing the audience. There is too much low wit and scurrility in Plautus; too much of quaint conceit, and play upon words. But withal, he displays more variety and more force than Terence. His characters are always strongly marked, though sometimes coarsely. His Amphytrion has been copied both by Moliere and by Dryden; and his Miser also, (in the Audularia) is the foundation of a capital play of Moliere's, which has been once and again imitated on the English stage. Than Terence, nothing can be more delicate, more polished, and elegant. His style is a model of the purest and most graceful Latinity. His dialogue is always decent and correct; and he possesses, beyond most writers, the art of relating with that beautiful picturesque simplicity, which never fails to please. His morality is, in general, unexceptionable. The situations which he introduces are often tender and interesting; and many of his sentiments touch the heart. Hence, he may be considered as the founder of that serious comedy, which has of late years been revived, and of which I shall have occasion afterwards to speak. If he fails in any thing, it is in sprightliness and strength. Both in his characters, and in his plots, there is too much sameness and uniformity throughout all his plays; he copied Menander, and is said not to have equalled him. In order to form a perfect comic author, an union would be requisite of the spirit and fire of Plautus, with the grace and correctness of Terence.

When we enter on the view of modern comedy, one of the first objects which presents itself, is, the Spanish theatre, which has been remarkably fertile in dramatic productions. Lopez de Vega, Guillin, and Calderon, are the chief Spanish comedians. Lopez de Vega, who is by much the most famous of them, is said to have written above a thousand plays; but our surprise at the number of his productions will be diminished, by being informed of their nature. From the

*Julius Cæsar has given us his opinion of Terence, in the following lines, which are preserved in the life of Terence, ascribed to Suetonius:

Tu quoque, tu in summis, o dimidiate Menander,
Poneris, et merito puri sermonis amator;

Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta foret vis
Comica, ut æquato virtus polleret honore

Cum Græcis, neque in hac despectus parte jaceres ;
Unum hoc maceror et doleo tibi deesse, Terenti.

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