little, to the delusion; and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little further than the French do.
Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us. In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak, and speak with dignity, too. Hence the necessity of their being written in verse, and, unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato, the Stoic, expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine,[1] at Paris; and fetches his last breath at London, in most harmonious and correct blank verse.
It is quite otherwise with comedy, which should be mere common life, and not one jot bigger. Every character should speak upon the stage, not only what it would utter in the situation there represented, but in the same manner in which it would express it. For which reason, I cannot allow rhymes in comedy, unless they were put into the mouth and came out of the mouth of a mad poet. But it is impossible to deceive one's self enough (nor is it the least necessary in comedy) to suppose a dull rogue of a usurer cheating, or gros Jean blundering, in the finest rhymes in the world.
As for operas, they are essentially too absurd and
- ↑ As to terminations, so careful were the best French poets of their rhymes.
