“Most of their new Plays are, like some of ours, derived from the Spanish novels.  There is scarce one of them, without a veil; and a trusty DIEGO, who drolls, much after the rate of the Adventures [pp. 533, 553].  But their humours, if I may grace them with that name, are so thin sown; that never above One of them comes up in a Play.  I dare take upon me, to find more variety of them, in one play of BEN.  JOHNSON’s, than in all theirs together:  as he who has seen the Alchemist, the Silent Woman, or Bartholomew Fair, cannot but acknowledge with me.  I grant the French have performed what was possible on the ground work of the Spanish plays.  What was pleasant before, they have made regular.  But there is not above one good play to be writ upon all those Plots.  They are too much alike, to please often; which we need not [adduce] the experience of our own Stage to justify.

“As for their New Way of mingling Mirth with serious Plot, I do not, with LISIDEIUS, condemn the thing; though I cannot approve their manner of doing it.  He tells us, we cannot so speedily re-collect ourselves, after a Scene of great Passion and Concernment, as to pass to another of Mirth and Humour, and to enjoy it with any relish.  But why should he imagine the Soul of Man more heavy than his Senses?  Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object, to a pleasant, in a much shorter time than is required to this? and does not the unpleasantness of the first commend the beauty of the latter?  The old rule of Logic might have convinced him, that ‘Contraries when placed near, set off each other.’  A continued gravity keeps the spirit too much bent.  We must refresh it sometimes; as we bait [lunch] upon a journey, that we may go on with greater ease.  A Scene of Mirth mixed with Tragedy, has the same effect upon us, which our music has betwixt the Acts; and that, we find a relief to us from the best Plots and Language of the Stage, if the discourses have been long.

“I must, therefore, have stronger arguments, ere I am convinced that Compassion and Mirth, in the same subject, destroy each other:  and, in the meantime, cannot but conclude to the honour of our Nation, that we have invented, increased, and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the Stage than was ever known to the Ancients or Moderns of any nation; which is, Tragi-Comedy.

“And this leads me to wonder why LISIDEIUS [p. 533], and many others, should cry up the barrenness of the French Plots above the variety and copiousness of the English?

“Their Plots are single.  They carry on one Design, which is push forward by all the Actors; every scene in the Play contributing and moving towards it.  Ours, besides the main Design, have Under Plots or By-Concernments of less considerable persons and intrigues; which are carried on, with the motion of the main Plot:  just as they say the orb [?_orbits_] of the fixed stars, and those of the planets (though