c dialogue, their mirth ought to be
chastened, till their language bears a relation to that of the higher
persons. For example, nothing can be more absurd than in "Don
Sebastian," and some of Southerne's tragedies, to hear the comic
character answer in prose, and with a would-be witticism, to the solemn,
unrelaxed blank verse of his tragic companion.[35] Mercutio is, I think,
one of the best instances of such a comic person as may be reasonably
and with propriety admitted into tragedy: from which, however, I do not
exclude those lower characters, whose conversation appears absurd if
much elevated above their rank. There is, however, another mode, yet
more difficult to be used with address, but much more fortunate in
effect when it has been successfully employed. This is, when the
principal personages themselves do not always remain in the buckram of
tragedy, but reserve, as in common life, lofty expressions for great
occasions, and at other times evince themselves capable of feeling the
lighter, as well as the more violent or more deep, affections of the
mind. The shades of comic humour in Hamlet, in Hotspur, and in
Falconbridge, are so far from injuring, that they greatly aid the effect
of the tragic scenes, in which these same persons take a deep and
tragical share. We grieve with them, when grieved, still more because we
have rejoiced with them when they rejoiced; and, on the whole, we
acknowledge a deeper _frater feeling_, as Burns has termed it, in men
who are actuated by the usual changes of human temperament, than in
those who, contrary to the nature of humanity, are eternally actuated by
an unvaried strain of tragic feeling. But whether the poet diversifies
his melancholy scenes by the passing gaiety of subordinate characters;
or whether he qualifies the tragic state of his heroes by occasionally
assigning lighter tasks to them; or whether he chooses to employ both
modes of relieving the weight of misery through live long acts; it is
obviously unnecessary that he should distract the attention of his
audience, and destroy the regularity of his play, by introducing a comic
plot with personages and interest altogether distinct, and intrigue but
slightly connected with that of the tragedy. Dryden himself afterwards
acknowledged that though he was fond of the "Spanish Friar," he could
not defend it from the imputation of Gothic and unnatural irregularity;
"for mirth and gravity destroy each other, and are no more to be