Preface to Shakespeare | Page 4

many mischiefs and many benefits are done and
hindered without design.
Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient poets,
according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the
crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous
vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the terrours
of distress, and some the gayeties of prosperity. Thus rose the two
modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy,
compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means,
and considered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the
Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted both.

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not
only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays are
divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive
evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow,
and sometimes levity and laughter.
That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily
allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.
The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by
pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of
tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its
alterations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the
appearance of life, by shewing how great machinations and slender
designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low
co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.
It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted
in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by
a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to
move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This
reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in
daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes
seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction
cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred;
and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes
interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that
melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man
may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different
habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety.
The players, who in their edition divided our authour's works into
comedies, histories, and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished the
three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas.
An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however
serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion
constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst
us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were
tragedies to-day and comedies to-morrow.
Tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or
elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with

which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter
pleasure it afforded in its progress.
History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological
succession, independent of each other, and without any tendency to
introduce or regulate the conclusion. It is not always very nicely
distinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity
of action in the tragedy of "Antony and Cleopatra", than in the history
of "Richard the Second". But a history might be continued through
many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits.
Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakespeare's mode of
composition is the same; an interchange of seriousness and merriment,
by which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated at another.
But whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or depress, or to
conduct the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of
easy and familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he
commands us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation,
in tranquillity without indifference.
When Shakespeare's plan is understood, most of the criticisms of
Rhymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of "Hamlet" is opened,
without impropriety, by two sentinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's
window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms
which a modern audience would not easily endure; the character of
Polonius is seasonable and useful; and the Grave-diggers themselves
may be heard with applause.
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