1. A plot will be required in both. For the end of tragedy being to excite the affections by action, and the end of comedy, to manifest the truth of character through it, an artful constitution of the Fable is required to do justice both to the one and the other. It serves to bring out the pathos, and to produce humour. And thus the general form or structure of the two dramas will be one and the same.
2. More particularly, an unity and even simplicity in the conduct of the fable[5] is a perfection in each. For the course of the affections is diverted and weakened by the intervention of what we call a double plot; and even by a multiplicity of subordinate events, though tending to a common end; and, of persons, though all of them, some way, concerned in promoting it. The like consideration shews the observance of this rule to be essential to just comedy. For when the attention is split on so many interfering objects, we are not at leisure to observe, nor do we so fully enter into, the truth of representation in any of them; the sense of humour, as of the pathos, depending very much on the continued and undiverted operation of its object upon us.
3. The two dramas agree, also, in this circumstance; that the manners of the persons exhibited should be imperfect. An absolutely good, or an absolutely bad, character is foreign to the purpose of each. And the reason is, 1, That such a representation is improbable. And probability constitutes, as we have seen, the very essence of comedy; and is the medium, through which tragedy is enabled most powerfully to affect us. 2. Such characters are improper to comedy, because, as was hinted above, they turn the attention aside from contemplating the expression of them, which we call humour. And they are not less unsuited to tragedy, because though they make a forcible impression on the mind, yet, as Aristotle well observes, they do not produce the passions of pity and terror; that is, their impressions are not of the nature of that pathos, by which tragedy works its purpose. [κ. ίγ.]
There are, likewise, some peculiarities, which distinguish the two dramas. And
1. Though a plot be necessary to produce humour, as well as the pathos, yet a good plot is not so essential to comedy, as tragedy. For the pathos is the result of the entire action; that is, of all the circumstances of the story taken together, and conspiring by a probable tendency, to a completion in the event. A failure in the just arrangement and disposition of the parts may, then, affect what is of the essence of this drama. On the contrary, humour, though brought out by action, is not the effect of the whole, but may be distinctly evidenced in a single scene; as may be eminently illustrated in the two comedies of Fletcher, called The Little French Lawyer, and The Spanish Curate. The nice contexture of the fable therefore, though it may give pleasure of another kind, is not so immediately required to the production of that pleasure, which the nature of comedy demands. Much less is there occasion for that labour and ingenuity of contrivance, which is seen in the intricacy of the Spanish fable. Yet this is the taste of our comedy. Our writers are all for plot and intrigue; and never appear so well satisfied with themselves as when, to speak in their own phrase, they contrive to have a great deal of business on their hands. Indeed they have reason. For it hides their inability to colour manners, which is the proper but much harder province of true comedy.
2. Tragedy succeeds best, when the subject is real; comedy, when it is feigned. What would this say, but that tragedy, turning our attention principally on the action represented, finds means to interest us more strongly on the persuasion of its being taken from actual life? While comedy, on the other hand, can neglect these scrupulous measures of probability, as intent only on exhibiting characters; for which purpose an invented story will serve much better. The reason is, real action does not ordinarily afford variety of incidents enough to shew the character fully: feigned action may.
And this difference, we may observe, explains the reason why tragedies are often formed on the most trite and vulgar subjects, whereas a new subject is generally demanded in comedy. The reality of the story being of so much consequence to interest the affections, the more known it is, the fitter for the poet’s purpose. But a feigned story having been found more convenient for the display of characters, it grew into a rule that the story should be always new. This disadvantage on the side of the comic poet is taken notice of in those verses of Antiphanes, or rather, as Casaubon conjectures, of Aristophanes, in a play of his intitled, Ποίησις. The reason of this difference now appears.
—Μακάριόν ἐστιν ἡ τραγῳδία
Ποίημα κατὰ πάντ’. εἴγε πρῶτον οἱ λόγοι
Ὑπὸ τῶν θεατῶν εἰσὶν ἐγνωρισμένοι,
Πρὶν καί τιν’ εἰπεῖν, ὡς ὑπομνῆσαι μόνον
Δεῖ τὸν ποιητήν. Οἰδίπουν γάρ ἄν γε φῶ,
Τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πάντ’ ἴσασιν· Ὁ πατὴρ Λάïος,
Μήτηρ Ἰοκάστη, θυγατέρες, παῖδες τίνες·
Τὶ πείσεθ’ οὗτος, τί πεποίηκεν····
Ἡμῖν δὲ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἔστιν· ἀλλὰ πάντα δεῖ
Εὑρεῖν ὀνόματα καινὰ, τὰ διῳκημένα
Πρότερον, τὰ νῦν παρόντα, τὴν καταστροφὴν,
Τὴν ἐσβολήν. ἀν ἕν τι τούτων παραλίπῃ,
Χρέμης τις, ἢ Φείδων τις ἐκσυρίττεται,
Πηλεῖ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἔξεστι καὶ Τεύκρῳ ποιεῖν.
One sees, then, the reason why Tragedy prefers real subjects, and even old ones; and, on the contrary, why comedy delights in feigned subjects, and new.
The same genius in the two dramas is observable, in their draught of characters. Comedy makes all its Characters general; Tragedy, particular. The Avare of Moliere is not so properly the picture of a covetous man, as of covetousness itself. Racine’s Nero, on the other hand, is not a picture of cruelty, but of a cruel man.