Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/23

Rh have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleaure conits in variety.

The players, who in their edition divided our author’s works into comedies, hitories, and tragedies, eem not to have ditinguihed the three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas.

An action which ended happily to the principal perons, however erious or ditresful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion contituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongt us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catatrophe, were tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow.

Tragedy was not in thoe times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous concluion, with which the common criticim of that age was atisfied, whatever lighter pleaure it afforded in its progres.

Hitory was a eries of actions, with no other than chronological ucceion, independent on each other, and without any tendency to introduce or regulate the concluion. It is not always very nicely ditinguihed from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, than in the hitory of Richard the Second. But a hitory might be continued through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits. Through