Search -
Criticisms and Dramatic Essays of the English Stage, by W. Hazlitt, Ed. by His Son [w. Hazlitt].
Criticisms and Dramatic Essays of the English Stage by W Hazlitt Ed by His Son - w. Hazlitt Author:William Hazlitt General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1851 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: ON MODERN COMEDY. The question which has often been asked, Why there are so few modern Comedies? appears in a great measure to answer itself. It is because so many excellent comedies have been written, that there are none such written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out -- destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to nature ; and men, seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects pass in gay review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which the public taste exercises upon the stage, but the criticism which the stage exercises upon public manners, that is fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame, correct, and spiritless. We are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum, and forced to wear the same dull uniform of outward appearance; and yet it is asked, why the Comic Muse does not point, as she was wont, at the peculiarities of our gait and gesture, 1817. and exhibit the picturesque contrast of our dress and costume, in all that graceful variety in which she delights. The genuine source of comic writing, ". Where it must live, or have no life at all," is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing peculiarities of men and manners. Now, this distinction can subsist, so as to be strong, pointed, and general, only while the manners of different classes are formed immediately by their particular circumstances, and the characters of individuals by their natural temp...« less