leads them, and you reduce them, for the most part, to very tedious Conversations. Most of their motions, as well as their discourses, should be the effects of their Passion; their Joy, their Sorrow, their Fears, and their Desires, ought to have a little tincture of Love, in order to be taking.
If you introduce a Mother rejoicing for the happiness of her dear Son, or afflicting herself for the misfortune of her poor Daughter, her satisfaction, or her grief, will make but a weak impression upon the spectators. To affect us with the tears and complaints of this Sex, shew us a Mistress that bewails the death of a Lover; and not a Wife, that laments the loss of a Husband. The grief of Mistresses, which is tender and endearing, has a far greater influence upon us, than the affliction of an inveigling, self-interested Widow, who, as sincere as she happens to be sometimes, always gives us a melancholy idea of Funerals, and their dismal Ceremonies.
Of all the Widows that ever appear'd upon the Theatre, I can endure none but Cornelia[1]; because, instead of making me think of fatherless Children, and a Wife without a spouse, her affections truly Roman, recal to my mind, the idea of antient Rome, and of the great Pompey.
This is all that may reasonably be allow'd to Love upon our Theatres: let our Writers be contented with this, so far even as the severest Rules of the Drama will allow of it; and let not its greatest favourers believe, that the chief design of Tragedy, is to excite a tenderness in our hearts. In Subjects truly Heroick, a true Greatness of Soul ought to be maintain'd above all things. That which would be pleasing and tender in the Mistress of an ordinary man, is often weak and scandalous in the Mis
- ↑ See Corneille's Pompey.
