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You never see any of their plays end with a conversion, or simple change of will, which is the ordinary way which our poets use to end theirs. It shew little art in the conclusion of a dramatick poem, when they who have hindered the felicity during the four acts, desist from it in the fifth, without some powerful cause to take them off their design.
It would certainly be very unbecoming in me to exhibit my honoured father, and my respected friend, as intellectual gladiators, for the entertainment of the publick; and therefore I suppress what would, I dare say, make an interesting scene in this dramatick sketch this account of the transit of Johnson over the Caledonian hemisphere.
Essay on Dramatick Poesy. A French hendecasyllable verse runs exactly like our ballad measure: A cobbler there was and he lived in a stall, ... La raison, pour marcher, n'a souvent qu'une voye. The verse is not a hendecasyllable. Moore's Diary, 24th April, 1821.
In a word, not the enthusiastick Maid of Orleans was more serviceable of old to the French army when the English had distressed them, than this fair Quaker was at the head of that dramatick attempt upon which the support of their weak society depended."
Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an encumberance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour.
There were likewise some men, who acted a kind of a Farce; but this was so short that we could gather nothing from it, only that it shew'd that these People have a Notion of Dramatick performances, and some of our Gentlemen saw them act a Farce the next day, wherein was 4 Acts, and it seem'd to them to represent a War between the Bolabola men and those of Ulietea, wherein the former triumph'd over the latter; but what might help them to draw this Conclusion was the knowing that such a thing has not long ago hapned between these 2 People, and that the Bolabola men at present possess most of the Lands on this Island.
Davies said, he was the first dramatick writer who introduced genteel ladies upon the stage. Johnson refuted this observation by instancing several such characters in comedies before his time. The genteelest characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces?
Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before such authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present question one of those that are to be decided by mere authority, but because it is to be suspected, that these precepts have not been so easily received but for better reasons than I have yet been able to find.
How free from all sordid and impure Mixtures, how innocent, as well as diverting, will our Comedies appear, when they have been corrected and refin'd by such an accomplish'd Director of the Dramatick Poets?
Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy.
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