Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/21

Rh Shakepeare’s plays are not in the rigorous and critical ene either tragedies or comedies, but compoitions of a ditinct kind; exhibiting the real tate of ublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and orrow, mingled with endles variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expreing the coure of the world, in which the los of one is the gain of another; in which, at the ame time, the reveller is hating to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is ometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many michiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without deign.

Out of this chaos of mingled purpoes and caualties the ancient poets, according to the laws which cutom had precribed, elected ome the crimes of men, and ome their aburdities; ome the momentous viciitudes of life, and ome the lighter occurrences; ome the terrors of ditres, and ome the gayeties of properity. Thus roe the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compoitions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and conidered as o little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a ingle writer who attempted both.

Shakepeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and orrow not only in one mind, but in one compoition. Almot all his plays are divided between erious and ludicrous characters, and, in the ucceive evolutions of the deign, ometimes