am afraid our Tragick Writers may
make an ill use of. As our Heroes are generally Lovers, their Swelling
and Blustring upon the Stage very much recommends them to the fair Part
of their Audience. The Ladies are wonderfully pleased to see a Man
insulting Kings, or affronting the Gods, in one Scene, and throwing
himself at the Feet of his Mistress in another. Let him behave himself
insolently towards the Men, and abjectly towards the Fair One, and it is
ten to one but he proves a Favourite of the Boxes. _Dryden_ and _Lee_,
in several of their Tragedies, have practised this Secret with good
Success.

But to shew how a Rant pleases beyond the most just and natural Thought
that is not pronounced with Vehemence, I would desire the Reader when he
sees the Tragedy of _OEdipus_, to observe how quietly the Hero is
dismissed at the End of the third Act, after having pronounced the
following Lines, in which the Thought is very natural, and apt to move
Compassion;

'To you, good Gods, I make my last Appeal;
Or clear my Virtues, or my Crimes reveal.
If in the Maze of Fate I blindly run,
And backward trod those Paths I sought to shun;
Impute my Errors to your own Decree:
My Hands are guilty, but my Heart is free.'

Let us then observe with what Thunder-claps of Applause he leaves the
Stage, after the Impieties and Execrations at the End of the fourth Act;
[4] and you will wonder to see an Audience so cursed and so pleased at
the same time;

'O that as oft have at Athens seen,--

[Where, by the Way, there was no Stage till many Years after OEdipus.]

... The Stage arise, and the big Clouds descend;
So now, in very Deed, I might behold
This pond'rous Globe, and all yen marble Roof,
Meet like the Hands of Jove, and crush Mankind.
For all the Elements, &c.'

[Footnote 1: Here Aristotle is not quite accurately quoted. What he says
of the tragedies which end unhappily is, that Euripides was right in
preferring them,

'and as the strongest proof of it we find that upon the stage, and in
the dramatic contests, such tragedies, if they succeed, have always
the most tragic effect.'

Poetics, Part II. Sec. 12.]

[Footnote 2: Of the two plays in this list, besides 'Othello', which
have not been mentioned in the preceding notes, 'All for Love', produced
in 1678, was Dryden's 'Antony and Cleopatra', 'Oroonoko', first acted
in, 1678, was a tragedy by Thomas Southerne, which included comic
scenes.