But among all our methods of moving pity or terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous, and which more exposes us to the contempt and ridicule of our neighbours, than that dreadful butchering of one another, which is very frequent upon the English stage.  To delight in seeing men stabbed, poisoned, racked, or impaled is certainly the sign of a cruel temper; and as this is often practised before the British audience, several French critics, who think these are grateful spectacles to us, take occasion from them to represent us as a people who delight in blood.  It is indeed very odd to see our stage strewed with carcasses in the last scenes of a tragedy; and to observe in the wardrobe of the playhouse several daggers, poniards, wheels, bowls for poison, and many other instruments of death.  Murders and executions are always transacted behind the scenes in the French theatre, which in general is very agreeable to the manners of a polite and civilised people; but as there are no exceptions to this rule on the French stage, it leads them into absurdities almost as ridiculous as that which falls under our present censure.  I remember in the famous play of Corneille, written upon the subject of the Horatii and Curiatii, the fierce young hero, who had overcome the Curiatii one after another (instead of being congratulated by his sister for his victory, being upbraided by her for having slain her lover), in the height of his passion and resentment kills her.  If anything could extenuate so brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the sentiments of nature, reason, or manhood could take place in him.  However, to avoid public bloodshed, as soon as his passion is wrought to its height, he follows his sister the whole length of the stage, and forbears killing her till they are both withdrawn behind the scenes.  I must confess, had he murdered her before the audience, the indecency might have been greater; but as it is, it appears very unnatural, and looks like killing in cold blood.  To give my opinion upon this case, the fact ought not to have been represented, but to have been told if there was any occasion for it.

It may not be unacceptable to the reader to see how Sophocles has conducted a tragedy under the like delicate circumstance.  Orestes was in the same condition with Hamlet in Shakespeare, his mother having murdered his father and taken possession of his kingdom in conspiracy with her adulterer.  That young prince, therefore, being determined to revenge his father’s death upon those who filled his throne, conveys himself by a beautiful stratagem into his mother’s apartment, with a resolution to kill her.  But because such a spectacle would have been too shocking to the audience, this dreadful resolution is executed behind the scenes.  The mother is heard calling to her son for mercy, and the son answering her that she showed no mercy to his father; after which she shrieks out that she is wounded, and by what follows we find that she is