Thus, some make comedy a
representation of mean and others of bad men; some think that its
essence consists in the unimportance, others in the fictitiousness of
the transaction. But any man's reflections will inform him, that every
dramatick composition which raises mirth, is comick; and that, to raise
mirth, it is by no means universally necessary, that the personages
should be either mean or corrupt, nor always requisite, that the action
should be trivial, nor ever, that it should be fictitious.
If the two kinds of dramatick poetry had been defined only by their
effects upon the mind, some absurdities might have been prevented, with
which the compositions of our greatest poets are disgraced, who, for
want of some settled ideas and accurate distinctions, have unhappily
confounded tragick with comick sentiments. They seem to have thought,
that as the meanest of personages constituted comedy, their greatness
was sufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but
that they should crowd the scene with monarchs, and generals, and
guards; and make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfall of
kingdoms, and the rout of armies. They have not considered, that
thoughts or incidents, in themselves ridiculous, grow still more
grotesque by the solemnity of such characters; that reason and nature
are uniform and inflexible: and that what is despicable and absurd, will
not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great;
that the most important affairs, by an intermixture of an unseasonable
levity, may be made contemptible; and that the robes of royalty can give
no dignity to nonsense or to folly.
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