Executions, and rather chose to
perform them behind the Scenes, if it could be done with as great an
Effect upon the Audience. At the same time I must observe, that though
the devoted Persons of the Tragedy were seldom slain before the
Audience, which has generally something ridiculous in it, their Bodies
were often produced after their Death, which has always in it something
melancholy or terrifying; so that the killing on the Stage does not seem
to have been avoided only as an Indecency, but also as an Improbability.

_Nec pueros coram populo_ Medea _trucidet;
Aut humana palam coquat exta nefarius_ Atreus;
_Aut in avem_ Progne _vertatur_, Cadmus _in anguem,
Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi_.

Hor.

Medea _must not draw her murth'ring Knife,
Nor_ Atreus _there his horrid Feast prepare._
Cadmus _and_ Progne's _Metamorphosis,
(She to a Swallow turn'd, he to a Snake)
And whatsoever contradicts my Sense,
I hate to see, and never can believe._

(Ld. ROSCOMMON.) [4]

I have now gone through the several Dramatick Inventions which are made
use of by [the] Ignorant Poets to supply the Place of Tragedy, and by
[the] Skilful to improve it; some of which I could wish entirely
rejected, and the rest to be used with Caution. It would be an endless
Task to consider Comedy in the same Light, and to mention the
innumerable Shifts that small Wits put in practice to raise a Laugh.
_Bullock_ in a short Coat, and _Norris_ in a long one, seldom fail of
this Effect. [5] In ordinary Comedies, a broad and a narrow brim'd Hat
are different Characters. Sometimes the Wit of the Scene lies in a
Shoulder-belt, and Sometimes in a Pair of Whiskers. A Lover running
about the Stage, with his Head peeping out of a Barrel, was thought a
very good Jest in King _Charles_ the Second's time; and invented by one
of the first Wits of that Age. [6] But because Ridicule is not so
delicate as Compassion, and [because] [7] the Objects that make us laugh
are infinitely more numerous than those that make us weep, there is a
much greater Latitude for comick than tragick Artifices, and by
Consequence a much greater Indulgence to be allowed them.

C.

[Footnote 1: the]

[Footnote 2: In Act V The toll of the passing bell for Pierre in the
parting scene between Jaffier and Belvidera.]

[Footnote 3: Thus Rene Rapin,--whom Dryden declared alone

'sufficient, were all other critics lost, to teach anew the ru