. His story requires Romans or kings, but he
thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of
all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for
that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was
inclined to shew an usurper and a murderer not only odious, but
despicable; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing
that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural
power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet
overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter,
satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.

The censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes, as
it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. Let the fact be
first stated, and then examined.

Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either
tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the
real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and
sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes
of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss
of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is
hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the
malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and 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 terrors of distress,
and some the gaieties 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