An Essay of Dramatic PoesyClarendon Press, 1889 - 141 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action admiration ancients answer appear argument Aristotle audience Beaumont beauty Ben Johnson Berkeley betwixt blank verse CALIFORNIA LIBRARY catachresis Catiline characters comedy commend compass contrived Corneille Corneille's Crites defence delight discourse drama Dramatic Poesy dramatick Dryden Duke of Lerma edition English errour ESSAY OF DRAMATIC Eugenius Euripides fancy farther favour Fletcher give Greek honour Horace humour imagine imitation of nature Indian Emperor Johnson judge judgment Julius Cæsar language Latin leave Lisideius Lord Buckhurst Maid's Tragedy Malone ment modern Neander nearest never observed opinion Ovid passions perfection persons plot poem poet prose prove reason represented rest rhyme rule scene Scornful Lady Sejanus Seneca serious plays Shakspeare shew Silent Woman Sir Robert Howard speak stage suppose Terence theatre thing thoughts tragedy truth twenty-four unity of place UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA unnatural words writ writing
Popular passages
Page 67 - ... All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 136 - To make a child now swaddled; to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
Page 67 - I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him...
Page 70 - Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
Page 69 - As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it.
Page 70 - But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him.
Page 7 - The drift of the ensuing discourse was chiefly to vindicate the honour of our English writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before them. This I intimate, lest any should think me so exceeding vain as to teach others an art which they understand much better than myself.
Page 42 - The end of tragedies or serious plays, says Aristotle, is to beget admiration, compassion, or concernment; but are not mirth and compassion things incompatible ? and is it not evident that the poet must of necessity destroy the former by intermingling of the latter?
Page 17 - A JUST AND LIVELY IMAGE OF HUMAN NATURE, REPRESENTING ITS PASSIONS AND HUMOURS; AND THE CHANGES OF FORTUNE, TO WHICH IT IS SUBJECT: FOR THE DELIGHT AND INSTRUCTION OF MANKIND.
Page 68 - Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem: and in the last King's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him.