ings.

For the moving of pity our principal machine is the handkerchief; and
indeed in our common tragedies we should not know very often that the
persons are in distress by anything they say, if they did not from
time to time apply their handkerchiefs to their eyes. Far be it from
me to think of banishing this instrument of sorrow from the stage; I
know a tragedy could not subsist without it: all that I would contend
for is to keep it from being misapplied. In a word, I would have the
actor's tongue sympathise with his eyes.

A disconsolate mother, with a child in her hand, has frequently drawn
compassion from the audience, and has therefore gained a place in
several tragedies. A modern writer, that observed how this had took
in other plays, being resolved to double the distress, and melt
his audience twice as much as those before him had done, brought a
princess upon the stage with a little boy in one hand and a girl
in the other. This too had a very good effect. A third poet being
resolved to outwrite all his predecessors, a few years ago introduced
three children with great success: and, as I am informed, a young
gentleman, who is fully determined to break the most obdurate hearts,
has a tragedy by him where the first person that appears upon the
stage is an afflicted widow in her mourning weeds, with half a dozen
fatherless children attending her, like those that usually hang about
the figure of Charity. Thus several incidents that are beautiful in a
good writer become ridiculous by falling into the hands of a bad one.

But among all our methods of moving pity or terror, there is none so
absurd and barbarous, and which more exposes us to the contempt and
ridicule of our neighbours, than that dreadful butchering of one
another, which is very frequent upon the English stage. To delight in
seeing men stabbed, poisoned, racked, or impaled is certainly the sign
of a cruel temper; and as this is often practised before the British
audience, several French critics, who think these are grateful
spectacles to us, take occasion from them to represent us as a people
who delight in blood. It is indeed very odd to see our stage strewed
with carcasses in the last scenes of a tragedy; and to observe in the
wardrobe of the playhouse several daggers, poniards, wheels, bowls for
poison, and many other instruments of death. Murders and executions
are always transacted behind the scenes in the French theatre, which
in general is ver