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the vehemence with which he speaks of them, and the imprecations he utters against the delinquent son, that we can guess at the violence of his emotions; therefore he excites more indignation at the conduct of Polynices, than sympathy with his own forrow; of which we can judge only as Spectators: for he has explained to us merely the external duties and relations of Parent and Child. The pangs of paternal tenderness, thus wounded, are more pathetically expressed by King Lear, who leaves out whatever of this enormity is equally sensible to the spectator, and immediately exposes to us his own internal feelings, when, in the bitterness of his foul, curfing his daughter's offspring, he adds,

That she may feel,

How sharper than a ferpent's tooth it is,
To have a thankless child.

By this we perceive, how deeply paternal affection is wounded by filial ingratitude.

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In the play of King John, the legate offers many arguments of confolation to Constance, on the lofs of Arthur; they appear, to the Spectator, reasonable, till she so strongly expresses the peculiar tenderness of maternal love, by answering,

He speaks to me that never had a fon.

One might be made to conceive, in some degree, the horrors of a murderer, under whose knife the bleeding victim is expiring in agonies, by a description of the unhappy object; but how fully, and how forcibly is the confciousness of guilt expressed by Macbeth, when, speaking of the grooms who lay near Duncan, he says,

MACBETH.

One cry'd, God bless us! and Amen! the other;
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands,
Listening their fear. I could not say, Amen,
When they did say, God bless us!

:

These

These expressions open to us the internal state of the persons interested, and never fail to command our sympathy. Shakespear feems to have had the art of the Dervise, in the Arabian tales, who could throw his foul into the body of another man, and be at once poffefsed of his sentiments, adopt his passions, and rise to all the functions and feelings of his situation.

Shakespear was born in a rank of life, in which men indulge themselves in a free expression of their passions, with little regard to exterior appearance. This perhaps made him more acquainted with the emotions of the heart, and less knowing or observant of outward forms: against the one he often offends, he very rarely misrepresents the other. The French tragedians, on the contrary, attend not to the nature of the Man, whom they represent, but to the decorums of his Rank: so that their best tragedies are made ridiculous, by changing the condition of the perfons of the drama; which could

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not be so easily effected, if they spoke the language of passion, which in all ranks of men is much alike. This kind of exterior representation falls intirely short of the intention of the Drama: and indeed many Plays are little more than Poems rehearsed; and the theatrical decorations are used rather to improve the Spectacle, than to affift the Drama, of which the Poet remains the apparent hero. We are told by a French Critic, that the great pleasure of their audience arises from a reflection on the difficulty of rhyming in that language. If that be the cafe, it is plain neither the French Tragedians endeavour at, nor their Audience expect from them, the true perfections of Drama. For, by the fame rule, if Hercules was reprefented under the difficulties of performing any of the tasks enjoined by Eurystheus, the attention of the Audience would not be engaged so much to the means by which he atchieved his heroic labours, as to the sweat and toil of the Poet in his closet, in afsorting male and female rhymes. We have already remarked, that the more we revert from the

Stage Stage to the Poet, the less we shall be affected by what is acted; and therefore if the difficulty of rhyme, and its apparent difference from the common language of dialogue, be such, as continually to set the Art and the Artist before our eyes, the specific merit of a piece intended to conceal the Poet, and represent certain persons and events, does not, in any degree, exist in such compositions. Sophocles certainly unfolds the fatal mystery of the birth of Edipus with great art: but our interest in the play arises not from reflection on the conduct of the Poet, but is the effect of his making us alternately hope and fear for this guiltless, unhappy man. We wait with trembling expectation for the anfwer of the Oracle, and for the teftimony of Phorbas, because we imagine that the destiny of Edipus, and the fate of Thebes, depend on them; if we confidered it merely as the contrivance of the Poet, we should be as unconcerned at the unravelling of the plot, as about the explication of a riddle.

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