Lectures On the English Comic Writers Delivered At the Surry Institution
The book Lectures On the English Comic Writers Delivered At the Surry Institution was written by author Hazlitt, William, 1778-1830 Here you can read free online of Lectures On the English Comic Writers Delivered At the Surry Institution book, rate and share your impressions in comments. If you don't know what to write, just answer the question: Why is Lectures On the English Comic Writers Delivered At the Surry Institution a good or bad book?
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Johnson has urged so unanswerably on the subject, in his preface to Shakspeare. We may date the decline of English comedy from the time of Farquhar. For this several causes might be assigned in the political and moral changes of the times ; but among other minor ones, Jeremy Collier, in his View of the English Stage, frightened the poets, and did all he could to spoil tlie stage, by pretending to re- ON WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, &c. 17S form it; that is, by making it an echo of the pulpit, instead o...f a reflection of the manners of the world. He complains bitterly of the profane- ness of the stage ; and is for fining the actors for every oath they utter, to put an end to the prac- tice ; as if common swearing had been an inven- tion of the poets and stage-players. He cannot endure that the fine gentlemen drink, and the fine ladies intrigue, in the scenes of Congreve and Wycherley, when things so contrary to law and gospel happened nowhere else. He is vehement against duelling, as a barbarous custom, of which the example is suffered with impunity nowhere but on the stage.
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