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Hazlitt's Preference for Tragedy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Tragedy has generally been considered a greater literary achievement than comedy. Aristotle, with his emphasis on seriousness, purgation, and characters better than actual people, has lent authority to this preference, although he does not clearly award tragedy the higher place. More explicit in their choice of tragedy over comedy are Sidney, Milton, Addison, Johnson, and Arnold. A modern critic, Joseph Wood Krutch, has called tragedy “the greatest and the most difficult of arts”; and a modern philosopher, Bertrand Russell, has called it “of all the arts … the proudest, the most triumphant … ”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956
References
1 “An Apology for Poetry,” English Critical Essays (Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries), ed. E. D. Jones (London, 1922), p. 31; “Preface to Samson Agonistes,” English Critical Essays, p. 19; The Spectator, No. 39, ed. H. Morley (London, 1891), I, 148; “Preface to Shakespeare,” Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. W. Raleigh (London, 1908), p. 17; Mixed Essays, Irish Essays, and Others (New York, 1924), pp. 440–441. “The Tragic Fallacy,” Criticism, ed. M. Schorer, et al. (New York, 1948), p. 79; Mysticism and Logic (New York, 1929), p. S3. Examples could be multiplied, with, of course, something said in favor of comedy (e.g., Ben Jonson, “Timber, or Discoveries,” Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn, Oxford, 1908,1, 55–56).
2 “On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson,” Lectures on the English Comic Writers, in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930–34), iv, 31. See also “On Shakspeare and Milton,” Lectures on the English Poets, in Works, v, 56.
3 In treating Hazlitt's theory of imagination, I have had to go over some ground already covered by J. M. Bullitt, “Hazlitt and the Romantic Conception of the Imagination,” PQ, XXIV (1945), 343–361; and W. J. Bate, Criticism: the Major Texts (New York, 1952), pp. 281–292. Apart from using this theory to account for Hazlitt's evaluation of tragedy, I do not pretend to add much, if anything, to Messrs. Bullitt's and Bate's excellent discussions.
4 Biographia Literaria, Everyman's Library (London, 1934), Ch. xii, esp. pp. 136–141.
5 “On Poetry in General,” Lectures on the English Poets, p. 3; hereafter referred to in the text as “On Poetry.”
6 See also “On Shakspeare and Milton,” Lectures on Ike English Poets, pp. 54, 58–59.
7 This passage also implies that the language of poetry includes particulars. See “On the Pleasure of Painting” and “On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses,” Table Talk, in Works, viii, 9–10,122-145; “Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses” and “On the Elgin Marbles,” Works, xviii, 62–84,158; Bullitt, pp. 345–348; Bate, pp. 287–291,
8 See also “On Shakspeare and Milton,” p. S3; “Mr. Southey,” The Spirit of the Age, in Works, xi, 79–80. This is not the distinction that Hazlitt makes between “poetry of imagination” and “poetry of sentiment” (“Character of … The Excursion,” Works, xix, 18–19; Bate, p. 286).
9 “On Reason and Imagination,” The Plain Speaker, in Works, xii, 51.
10 “On Genius and Common Sense,” Table Talh, pp. 35,40-41. Cf. Wordsworth, “Preface to the Second Edition …,” Poetical Works, ed. E. de Selincourt (Oxford, 1944), ii, 397.
11 Works, l, 9–15. See also my article “Hazlitt's Principles of Human Action and the Improvement of Society,” If By Your Art, ed. A. L. Starrett (Pittsburgh, 1948), pp. 174–190.
12 “Belief, Whether Voluntary,” Works, xx, 369. See also “On People of Sense,” The Plain Speaker, pp. 55, 250; “On Shakspeare and Milton,” pp. 47, SO; “On Imitation” and “On Poetical Versatility,” The Round Table, in Works, iv, 76, 152; “On Reason and Imagination,” p. 45.
13 “On Shakspeare and Milton,” p. 53; “On Dryden and Pope,” Lectures on the English Poets, pp. 69–70.
14 “On Gusto,” The Round Table, p. 77; see Bate, pp. 285, 288–289.
15 “On Poetry in General,” p. 4; “On Shakspeare and Milton,” p. 58.
16 “On Modern Comedy,” The Round Table, p. 13.
17 “On Reason and Imagination,” pp. 47–48, 55. Cf. Shelley, “A Defense of Poetry,” Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. C. Baker (New York, 1951), pp. 501–502.
18 “Othello,” Characters of Shakespear's Plays, in Works, iv, 200.
19 “Lear,” Characters of Shakespear's Plays, pp. 271–272.
20 Cf. Elisabeth Schneider, The Aesthetics of William Hazlitt (Philadelphia, 1933), pp. 137–138.
21 “On Wit and Humour,” Lectures on the English Comic Writers, pp. 5–9.
22 “On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson,” pp. 31–32, 37, 35; “On the Comic Writers of the Last Century,” Lectures on the English Comic Writers, pp. 154–155, n.; see n. 29, below.
23 “On Dryden and Pope,” pp. 69–70.
24 “On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson,” pp. 39—41.
25 “On the Comic Writers of the Last Century,” pp. 154–155, n.
26 The “pursuit of uncertain pleasure and idle gallantry,” says Hazlitt, prompts most of the action. “It is the salt of comedy, without which it would be worthless and insipid. It makes Horner decent, and Millamant divine” (“On Wit and Humour,” p. 14). This seems to be the idea that Lamb, perhaps two years later, developed in his essay “On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century” (The Essays of Elia, Everyman's Library, London, 1932, pp. 165–172). Lamb never says that Restoration comedy did not represent real life in the time of Charles II, but what it does represent, he insists, is not to be confused with real life as 19th-century theatre-goers know it. Artificial comedies, therefore, “are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy land.” In this world the only business of the characters is “the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry,” and although the result in the actual world would be moral chaos, “no such effects are produced in this world” (pp. 165–168). Because Lamb and Hazlitt knew each other intimately and undoubtedly developed many of their ideas in conversation with each other, the problem of originality can hardly be solved.
27 Mixed Essays, Irish Essays, and Others, p. 440. Hazlitt might have made the fraction of liberation smaller.
28 Matthew Arnold (New York, 1939), p. 376.
29 “Preface to Shakespeare,” p. 21.
30 “George Barnwell,” A View of the English Stage, in Works, v, 268–269; “On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature,” Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, in Works, vi, 260.
31 Clifford Leech, Shakespeare's Tragedies (London, 1950), pp. 22–27, et passim.
32 “On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature,” p. 353.
33 Ibid., p. 350. Cf. De Quincey, “Theory of Greek Tragedy,” Collected Writings, ed. D. Masson (London, 1897), x, 342–359, esp. 347–350.
34 Poetics, trans. I. Bywater, Introduction to Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon (New York, 1947), pp. 626, 640–643.
35 “Coriolanus,” Characters of Shakespear's Plays, pp. 214–215.
36 Characters of Shakespear's Plays, pp. 232–234, 272–273.
37 “On Reason and Imagination,” p. 55.
38 “On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature,” pp. 347–348 ff. Hazlitt does make an exception of Otway, “the only writer of [his] school, who … has produced a tragedy … of indisputable excellence and lasting interest” (pp. 354–355).
39 Characters of Shakespear's Plays, pp. 192, 197, 204, 217, et passim.