LONDON,January 23,O.S.1752.
MY DEAR FRIEND:Have you seen the new tragedy of Varon,--[Written by the Vicomte de Grave;and at that time the general topic of conversation at Paris.]--and what do you think of it?Let me know,for I am determined to form my taste upon yours.I hear that the situations and incidents are well brought on,and the catastrophe unexpected and surprising,but the verses bad.I suppose it is the subject of all conversations at Paris,where both women and men are judges and critics of all such performances;such conversations,that both form and improve the taste,and whet the judgment;are surely preferable to the conversations of our mixed companies here;which,if they happen to rise above bragg and whist,infallibly stop short of everything either pleasing or instructive.
I take the reason of this to be,that (as women generally give the 'ton'
to the conversation)our English women are not near so well informed and cultivated as the French;besides that they are naturally more serious and silent.
I could wish there were a treaty made between the French and English theatres,in which both parties should make considerable concessions.
The English ought to give up their notorious violations of all the unities;and all their massacres,racks,dead bodies,and mangled carcasses,which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage.The French should engage to have more action and less declamation;and not to cram and crowd things together,to almost a degree of impossibility,from a too scrupulous adherence to the unities.The English should restrain the licentiousness of their poets,and the French enlarge the liberty of theirs;their poets are the greatest slaves in their country,and that is a bold word;ours are the most tumultuous subjects in England,and that is saying a good deal.Under such regulations one might hope to see a play in which one should not be lulled to sleep by the length of a monotonical declamation,nor frightened and shocked by the barbarity of the action.The unity of time extended occasionally to three or four days,and the unity of place broke into,as far as the same street,or sometimes the same town;both which,I will affirm,are as probable as four-and-twenty hours,and the same room.
More indulgence too,in my mind,should be shown,than the French are willing to allow,to bright thoughts,and to shining images;for though,I confess,it is not very natural for a hero or a princess to say fine things in all the violence of grief,love,rage,etc.,yet,I can as well suppose that,as I can that they should talk to themselves for half an hour;which they must necessarily do,or no tragedy could be carried on,unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity,the choruses of the ancients.Tragedy is of a nature,that one must see it with a degree of self-deception;we must lend ourselves a little to the delusion;and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than the French do.
Tragedy must be something bigger than life,or it would not affect us.