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If any thing could extenuate fo brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a fudden, before the sentiments of nature, reafon, or manhood, could take place in him. However, to avoid public bloodshed, as foon as his paffion is wrought to its height, he follows his fifter the whole length of the stage, and forbears killing her till they are both withdrawn behind the fcenes. I must confefs, had he murdered her before the audience, the indecency might have been greater; but as it is, it appears very unnatural, and Looks like killing in cold blood. To give my opinion upon this cafe, the fact ought not to have been reprefented, but to have been told, if there was any occafion for it.

It may not be unacceptable to the reader to see how Sophocles has conducted tragedy under the like delicate circumftanccs. Oreftes was in the fame condition with Hanilet in Shakespear, his mother having murdered his father, and taken poffeffion of his kingdom in confpiracy with the adulterer. The young prince therefore, being determined to revenge his father's death upon those who filled his throne, conveys himself by a beautiful ftratagem into his mother's apartment, with a refolution to kill her. But because such a spectacle would have been too fhocking for the audience, this dreadful refolution is executed behind the fcenes: the mother is heard calling out to her fon for mercy; and her fon anfwering her, that the fhewed no mercy to his father; after which the fhrieks out that the is wounded; and by what follows we find that fhe is flain. I do not remember that in any of our plays there are speeches made behind the fcenes, though there are other inftances of this nature to be met with in thofe of the ancients: and I believe my reader will agree with me, that there is fomething infinitely more affecting in this dreadful dialogue between the mother and her fon behind the fcenes, than could have been in any thing transacted before the audience. Oreftes immediately after meets the ufurper at the entrance of his palace; and by a very happy thought of the poet avoids killing him before

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the audience, by telling him that he should live fome time in his prefent bitterness of foul before he would dispatch him, and by ordering him to retire into that part of the palace where he had flain his father, whose murder he would revenge in the very fame place where it was committed. By this means the poet obferves that decency which Horace afterwards established by a rule, of forbearing to commit parricides or unnatural murders before the audience.

Nec coram populo natos Medea trucidet.

Ars Poet. ver. 185.

Let not Medea draw her murd'ring knife,
And spill her children's blood upon the stage.

RosCOMMON.

The French have therefore refin'd too much upon Horace's rule, who never defigned to banish all kinds of death from the stage; but only fuch as had too much horror in them, and which would have a better effect upon the audience when tranfacted behind the scenes. I would therefore recommend to my countrymen the practice of the ancient poets, who were very fparing of their public executions, and rather chofe to perform them behind the fcenes, if it could be done with as great an effect upon the audience. At the fame time I muft obferve that though the devoted perfons of the tragedy were feldom flain before the audience, which has generally fomething ridiculous it it, their bodies were often produced after their death, which has always in it fomething melancholy or terrifying; fo that the killing on the stage does not seem to have been avoided only as an indecency, but also as an improbability.

Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet;

Aut bumana palàm coquat exta nefarius Atreus;
Aut in avem Progne vertatur, Cadmus in anguem:
Quodcunque oftendis mihi fic, incredulus odi.

Medea must not draw her murd'ring knife,
Nor Atreus there his horrid feast prepare:

HOR.

Cadmus

Cadmus and Progne's metamphorfis,
(She to a swallow turn'd, he to a fnake)
And whatfoever contradicts my fenfe,
I hate to fee, and never can believe.

ROSCOMMON

I have now gone through the feveral dramatic inventions which are made ufe of by the ignorant poets to fupply the place of Tragedy, and by the skilful to improve it; fome of which I could with intirely rejected, and the reft to be ufed with caution. It would be an endless talk to confider Comedy in the fame light, and to mention the innumerable shifts that fmall wits put in practice to raife a laugh. Bullock in a fhort-coat, and Norris in a long one, feldom fail of this effect. In ordinary comedies, a broad and a narrow-brimmed hat are different characters. Sometimes the wit of the fcene lies in a fhoulderbelt, and fometimes in a pair of whiskers. A lover running about the ftage, with his head peeping out of a barrel, was thought a very good jeft in king Charles the Second's time; and invented by one of the firft wits of that age. But becaufe ridicule is not fo delicate as compaffion, and because the objects that make us laugh are infinitely more numerous than thofe that make us weep, there is a much greater latitude for comic than tragic artifices, and by confequence a much greater indulgence to be allowed them.

C.

No. XLV. SATURDAY, APRIL 21.

Natio comada eft

The nation is a company of players.

Juv.

THERE is nothing which I more defire than a fafe and honourable peace, though at the same time I am very apprehenfive of many ill confequence that may attend it. I do not mean in regard to our politics, but our manners. What an inundation of ribbons and bro

cades

cades will break in upon us! What peals of laughter and impertinence fhall we be expofed to! For the prevention of thofe great evils, I could heartily with that there was an act of parliament for prohibiting the importation of French fopperies.

The female inhabitants of our island have already received very strong impreffions from this ludicrous nation, tho' by the length of the war, as there is no evil which has not fome good attending it, they are pretty well worn out and forgotten. I remember the time when fome of our well-bred countrywomen kept their Valet de Chambre, because forfoo:h, a man was much more handy about them than one of their own fex. I myself have feen one of these male Abigails tripping about the room with a looking-glafs in his hand, and combing his lady's hair a whole morning together. Whether or not there was any truth in the ftory of a lady's being got with child by one of thefe her handmaids I cannot tell, but I think at prefent the whole race of them is extinct in our own country.

About the time that feveral of our fex were taken into this kind of fervice, the ladies likewife brought up the fashion of receiving vifits in their beds. It was then looked upon as a piece of ill-breeding for a woman to refuse to see a man, because she was not ftirring; and a porter would have been thought unfit for his place that could have made fo awkward an excufe. As I love to fee every thing that is new, I once prevailed upon my friend Will Honeycomb to carry me along with him to one of these travelled ladies, defiring him, at the fame time, to prefent me as a foreigner who could not speak English, that so I might not be obliged to bear a part in the difcourfe. The lady, tho' willing to appear undreft, had put on her best looks, and painted herfelf for our reception. Her hair appeared in a very nice diforder, as the night-gown which was thrown upon her fhoulders, was ruffled with great care. For my part, I am fo fhocked with every thing that looks immodeft in the fair sex, that I could not forbear taking off my eye from her when the moved in her bed, and was in the greatest confufion imaginable every time the ftined a leg or an arm. VOL. I.

R

As

As the coquettes, who introduced this custom, grew old, they left it off by degrees; well knowing that a woman of threefcore may kick and tumble her heart out without making any impreffions.

Sempronia is at prefent the moft profeft admirer of the French nation, but is fo modest as to admit her vifitants no farther than her toilet. It is a very odd fight that beautiful creature makes when he is talking politics with her treffes flowing about her fhoulders, and examining that face in the glafs which does fuch execution upon all the male standers-by. How prettily does fhe divide her difcourfe between her woman and her vifitants! What fprightly tranfitions does fhe make from an opera or a fermon, to an ivory comb or a pin-cushion! How have I been pleased to see her interrupted in an account of her travels, by a meffage to her footman; and holding her tongue in the midst of a moral reflection, by applying the tip of it to a patch!

There is nothing which expofes a woman to greater dangers, than that gaiety and airinefs of temper which are natural to moft of the fex. It fhould be therefore the concern of every wife and virtuous woman, to keep this fprightlinefs from degenerating into levity. On the contrary, the whole difcourfe and behaviour of the French is to make the fex more fantastical, or, as they are pleased to term it, more awakened,' than is confiftent either with virtue or difcretion. To speak loud in public affemblies, to let every one hear you talk of things that should only be mentioned' in private or in a whisper, are looked upon as parts of a refined education. At the fame time

a blush is unfashionable, and filence more illbred than any thing that can be fpoken. In fhort, difcretion and modefty, which in all other ages and countries have been regarded as the greatest ornaments of the fair fex, are confidered as the ingredients of narrow converfation and family-behaviour

Some years ago I was at the tragedy of Macbeth, and unfortunately placed myfelf under a woman of quality, that is fince dead; who, as I found by the noise the made, was newly returned from France. A little before

the

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