If when the character to be reprefented naturally fuppofes the charms of person in the performer, it is abfolutely neceffary that the actor fhould be able to please that part of his audience which have no other means of being affected but by the eyes, as well as thofe who have ears and understandings. This condition is yet vastly more effential to the actreffes who play the parts of thofe ladies whom the poet has made the objects of love, and reprefented as worthy to be belov'd and admir'd. It is not only a good face and a regular fhape that is neceffary for them on these occafions; beauty alone will not answer the purpofe: 'tis fomething that goes infinitely farther than beauty which they ought to be poffefs'd of; fomething that exerts its influence more generally and more powerfully over the heart; 'tis that je-ne-fçais-quoi, by means of which one woman appears charming, while the want of it renders a thousand others handfome in vain; 'tis that victorious agent, which is as certain always to take place, as never to be defcrib'd or defin'd.

While we in this manner require, that the performers in comedy have all thofe elegancies of person that we should expect to find in the happieft lovers in real life, who had nothing but their perfonal charms to recommend them; we alfo expect in every performer, who is to appear in a character to which the author has given a title and fentiments above the vulgar, an outfide which may not difgrace. the qualities within; fuch a perfon, indeed, as we should think ought to be connected with fuch accomplishments.

Tho' nature does not always proportion her endowments, either of mind or perfon, to the rank and ftation of life which people are born

to;

to; and we find often, a very despicable perfon accompanying a very high title; we cannot reconcile ourselves to this difproportion of things upon the ftage; we must always have a repugnance to the feeing an actor of a mean figure attempt the character of a perfon of the first quality.

We fhould be yet more difpleas'd at feeing fuch a performer enter in the character of fome heroic general, or mighty monarch in tragedy; he would appear to us not to perform his part, but to burlefque or turn it into traveftie. We can hardly recollect an impropriety of this kind on our own ftage which has any right to ftand in competition with one on the French theatre, the managers of which have been fome years ago fo ftruck with an incident owing to this fort of difproportion between the figure of the actor and the imaginary one of the heroe, that they preferve the remembrance of it as an eternal rule for the better adapting fuch [arts for the future. A young performer on that ftage, who had all the grand requifites of the mind to the forming a masterly player; who had fenfibility, fire, and an excellent understanding; but with all thefe, a figure very ill cut out for the reprefenting a heroe, would attempt the character of Mithridates: he play'd it in such a manner that his audience would have been all charm'd with him, if they had been all blind; but unluckily, in fpite of all his merit, the difagreeableness of his perfon prejudic'd the whole house against him; and, in one of the scenes where a princefs who is with him, perceiving fome uncommon emotion in his face, tells him, You change countenance; a pleafant fellow cry'd out from among the fpectators,

O!

O! let him! let him by all means! In a moment all the merit of the actor was loft and bury'd, and the audience thought of nothing, during the remainder of the performance, but of the difproportion between his perfon and the character he reprefented.

Every actor in a tragedy ought to have a noble and majestic figure; the nature of this fpecies of the drama requires, that every thing about it carry the air of grandeur: there are in tragedy, indeed, fubordinate characters, but there are no fubaltern, no low ones, as in comedy: it admits of humble friends or confidents, but then these are the confidents of princes and of heroes, and fhare with them the danger and the glory of governing kingdoms, or of forming the fchemes of the most heroic actions. It is therefore neceffary that the figure of every actor in this way, even of those who have the fmalleft, the leaft important parts affign'd them, fhould agree with the dignity of their characters, not with the length of their fpeeches, or the importance of the share they chance to bear in the action; and that they be fuch men as we may, without abfurdity, fuppofe the perfons they represent to have been.

It is abfolutely neceffary that thofe who play the capital parts in tragedy fhould have majestic and ftriking figures, fit for every noble enterprize the poet for the night may think proper to put into their characters: and it is not only requifite that we fee in them that majefly of air and deportment as well as figure, by which fuperior fouls are generally understood to be defcribed to us, but it is alfo neceffary that there be a fedate compofure in their countenance, that few but thofe of very elevated minds ever attain to.

The

The whole bufinefs of comedy being to divert and entertain us, it is not wonderful that the very nature of the performance banishes from it every thing that would tend to oppose the pleafure it aims to promote; and terror being one of the impreffions which it is the peculiar privilege of tragedy to excite in us, one might be apt to be furpriz'd that it fhould require in the perfons who are to perform in it a figure which might feem, at first fight, as much as any thing could be, contrary to the nature of fuch an intent. Two eafy reflections will let us into the fecret of all this feeming contradiction: tragedy may, on many occafions, reprefent to us cruel, nay barbarous and favage actions of the perfons who make a principal figure in the piece; but then these are always the effect of fome violent transport of rage, not of a temper in the perfon naturally brutal. We are very willing that the heroes in tragedy fhould be culpable, but we would always have them be criminal with great excufes, and as it were in fpite of themselves: we expect that even in the very act of delivering themselves up to the ill, they fhould preferve a kind of love and reverence for the good; and that they be led on artfully to the precipice, not that they plunge themfelves voluntarily headlong into it.

The murder of Desdemona by Othello, is one of the most brutal things done by the heroe of a play that we have an instance of; but with what a judicious care does the author excufe it in this unhappy man, by the thousand circumstances that he contrives to lead to it, and how nicely has he diftinguifhed between the favage fury of a bravo, and the juft refentment of an unoffending, injur'd husband, by making him in love with her even at the mo

ment

ment that he is about to deftroy her. Whoever will look into the following paffages with this view, will find great reason to be fatisfy'd with the conduct of this fcene of revenge, favage and brutish as it is in the period; I fay, whoever will look into them in his clofet will find this; for the judgment of the people who prepare and cut plays for the actors is not quite enough to lead them to comprehend the neceffity of fome of thofe things which affift in the palliating the circumftances in this manner, fo that we do not hear them on the ftage.

When Jago has by his cunning rais'd the jealoufy of the heroe to that pitch that he seems certain of his wife's crime, his refentment bursts out not against her, but the fuppos'd villain who had wrong'd him with her,

I would have him nine years a killing,

we expect fome horrible threat next against the lady, but he melts into tenderness, and only fays,

A fine woman! a fair woman! a fweet woman!

and 'tis with difficulty that Iago, who anfwers, Nay, you must forget that, is able to conjure up any other thoughts in him. This is one of thofe foothing paffages which fhew how much against the nature of the heroe is the crime he is afterwards to commit; and it is one of the many of the fame kind ftruck out by the prompters from his part.

Immediately after this, when he exclaims in the violence of his rage,

Aye,