“From hence likewise, it arises that one half of our Actors [i.e., the Characters in a Play] are not known to the other.  They keep their distances, as if they were MONTAGUES and CAPULETS; and seldom begin an acquaintance till the last Scene of the fifth Act, when they are all to meet on the Stage.

“There is no Theatre in the world has anything so absurd as the English Tragi-Comedy.  ’Tis a Drama of our own invention; and the fashion of it is enough to proclaim it so.  Here, a course of mirth; there, another of sadness and passion; a third of honour; and the fourth, a duel.  Thus, in two hours and a half, we run through all the fits of Bedlam.

“The French afford you as much variety, on the same day; but they do it not so unseasonably, or mal apropos as we.  Our Poets present you the Play and the Farce together; and our Stages still retain somewhat of the original civility of the ‘Red Bull.’

    “Atque ursum et pugiles media inter carmina poscunt.

“‘The end of Tragedies or serious Plays,’ says ARISTOTLE, ’is to beget Admiration [wonderment], Compassion, or Concernment.’  But are not mirth and compassion things incompatible? and is it not evident, that the Poet must, of necessity, destroy the former, by intermingling the latter? that is, he must ruin the sole end and object of his Tragedy, to introduce somewhat that is forced in, and is not of the body of it!  Would you not think that physician mad! who having prescribed a purge, should immediately order you to take restringents upon it?

“But to leave our Plays, and return to theirs.  I have noted one great advantage they have had in the Plotting of their Tragedies, that is, they are always grounded upon some known History, according to that of HORACE, Ex noto fictum carm n sequar:  and in that, they have so imitated the Ancients, that they have surpassed them.  For the Ancients, as was observed before [p. 522], took for the foundation of their Plays some poetical fiction; such as, under that consideration, could move but little concernment in the audience, because they already knew the event of it.  But the French[man] goes farther.

    “Atque ita mentitur, sic veris falso remiscet,
    Primo ne medium, media ne discrepet imum.

“He so interweaves Truth with probable Fiction, that he puts a pleasing fallacy upon us; mends the intrigues of Fate; and dispenses with the severity of History, to reward that virtue, which has been rendered to us, there, unfortunate.  Sometimes the Story has left the success so doubtful, that the writer is free, by the privilege of a Poet, to take that which, of two or more relations, will best suit his Design.  As, for example, the death of CYRUS; whom JUSTIN and some others report to have perished in the Scythian War; but XENOPHON affirms to have died in his bed of extreme old age.

“Nay more, when the event is past dispute, even then, we are willing to be deceived:  and the Poet, if he contrives it with appearance of truth, has all the audience of his party [on his side], at least, during the time his Play is acting.  So naturally, we are kind to virtue (when our own interest is not in question) that we take It up, as the general concernment of mankind.