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We may be en pleine tragedie. Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank verse, calling down blessings upon James the profligate who deserts her. Henry is a hero, and epaulettes are on his shoulders. Atqui sciebat, &c., whatever tortures are in store for him, he will be at his post of duty. You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in the two tragedies here mentioned. Why?
In "A True Declaration of the State of the Colonie in Virginia," published by the advice and direction of the Council of Virginia, London, 1610, we read: "But to clear all doubt, Sir Thomas Yates thus relateth the tragedie: "There was one of the company who mortally hated his wife, and therefore secretly killed her, then cut her in pieces and hid her in divers parts of his house: when the woman was missing, the man suspected, his house searched, and parts of her mangled body were discovered, to excuse himself he said that his wife died, that he hid her to satisfie his hunger, and that he fed daily upon her.
All this work was carefully finished, and bore the unmistakable stamp of literary genius. Reading now his "Ælla," or the "Ballad of Charite," or the long poem in ballad style called "Bristowe Tragedie," it is hard to realize that it is a boy's work.
Attracted by the homely power of pieces like The Gamester and Jane Shore, Diderot in France and Lessing in Germany attempted the tragédie bourgeoise, but the right of the "tradesmen's tragedies" as Goldsmith called them to exist at all was questioned until Kotzebue's pathetic power and theatrical skill captured nearly every stage in Europe.
There is also reason to suppose that another passage in the old tragedy of Hamlet is alluded to in Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608: "There are, as Hamlet sayes, things cald whips in store," a sentence which seems to have been well known and popular, for it is partially cited in the Spanish Tragedie, 1592, and in the First Part of the Contention, 1594.
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