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Actors and Acting
Literary Topics
955. Drama
"As the 
lighter species of dramatic poetry
professes the
imitation of common life, of real manners, and daily incidents,
it apparently presupposes a familiar knowledge of many
characters, and exact observation of the passing world."
Johnson: Congreve (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,040. Drama
"As a drama it [Comus] is deficient. The action is not
probable. A Masque, in those parts where supernatural
intervention is admitted, must indeed be given up to all the
freaks of imagination; but so far as the action is merely human
it ought to be reasonable."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,055. Drama
"A dialogue without action can never please like an union of the
narrative and dramatick powers."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,056. Drama; Experience;
Reading
"Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew
human nature only in the gross, and had never studied the shades
of character, nor the combinations of concurring nor the
perplexity of contending passions. He had read much and knew
what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and
was deficient in the knowledge which experience must confer."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,160. Criticism; Drama
"Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; for
though, perhaps, they might properly have contented themselves
with declaring it to be such a dramatic representation of
human life as may excite mirth, they have embarrassed their
definition with the means by which the comic writers attain their
end, without considering that the various methods of exhilarating
their audience, not being limited by nature, cannot be comprised
in precept. Thus, some make comedy a representation of mean, and
others of bad men; some think that its essence consists in the
unimportance, others in the fictitiousness of the transaction.
But any man's reflections will inform him that every dramatic
composition which raises mirth is comic; and that, to raise
mirth, it is by no means universally necessary that the
personages should be either mean or corrupt, nor always requisite
that the action should be trivial, nor ever, that it should be
fictitious."
Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751)
Link
1,161. Criticism; Drama
"If the two kinds of dramatic poetry had been defined only by
their effects upon the mind, some absurdities might have been
prevented, with which the compositions of our greatest poets have
been disgraced, who for want of some settled ideas and accurate
distinctions, have unhappily confounded tragic with comic
sentiments. They seem to have thought that as the meanness of
persons constituted comedy, their greatness was sufficient to
form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but that they
should crowd the scene with monarchs, and generals, and guards;
and make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfall of
kingdoms, and the rout of armies. They have not considered that
thoughts, or incidents, in themselves ridiculous, grow still more
grotesque by the solemnity of such characters; that reason and
nature are uniform and inflexible; and that what is despicable
and absurd will not, by any association with splendid titles,
become rational or great; that the most important affairs, by an
intermixture of an unreasonable levity, may be made contemptible;
and that the robes of royalty can give no dignity to nonsense or
folly."
Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751)
Link
1,162. Drama
"There is scarcely a tragedy of the last century which has not
debased its most important incidents, and polluted its most
serious interlocutions with buffoonery and meanness; but though
perhaps it cannot be pretended that the present age has added
much to the force and efficacy of the drama, it has at least been
able to escape many faults, which either ignorance had
overlooked, or indulgence had licensed."
Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751)
Link
1,303. Drama; Realism
"Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished and
virtue rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in real
life, the poet is certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on
the stage. For if poetry has an imitation of reality, how are
its laws broken by exhibiting the world in its true form? The
stage may sometimes gratify our wishes; but, if it be truly the
mirror of life, it ought to shew us sometimes what we are
to expect."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
Link
