...above all modem writers, the poet of namre . . . Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and crmcal sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions...distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary namre, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion...

...them, and was praised for his fidelity to nature. "Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or critical sense, either tragedies or comedies, but...nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow ... in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend."1...

...comprehensiveness of which Dr Johnson spoke, which makes Shakespeare's plays, as he argued, readable as 'compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real...endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination'.32 Eliot thought Shakespeare's lack of a pre-formed, coherent intellectual system a weakness...

...them, and was praised for his f1delity to nature. "Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or critical sense, either tragedies or comedies, but...nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow ... in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend."1...

...theatre', i9i0, in WB Years, Essays (London i9a4l a07l; 'Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous or critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind', Jobnson (in Raleiah, jabuson on Shnkespenre, ryl. See further p. 96 n. i88 below. "" Frtedrich Dürrenmatt,...

...umana, aprendo la strada allo Shakespeare dei romantici4". Così la "Preface" johnsoniana: Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either...combination; and expressing the course of the world in which [...], at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend [...]....

...for the cultivation of a tragicomic kind of tragedy. 'Shakespeare's plays,' declared Johnson in 1765. 'are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies . . . Shakespeare has unired the powers of exciting laughrer and sotrow not only in one mind, but in...

...because it approaches nearer than either comedy or tragedy 'to the appearance of life'. Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either...endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination.31 The 'mingled drama' is something much wider than the fusion of tragedy and comedy which...

...Shakespeare's plays that they: partake of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety . . . and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another ... in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolic of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits...

...there will be a 'but'. Again, when Johnson seeks to justify Shakespeare's mixed form, the fact that his plays are 'not in the rigorous and critical sense...proportion and innumerable modes of combination', he does so by saying that in the world as it is 'at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine,...