By example this will
be best expressed. I have a story of young Polydorus, delivered for
safety's sake, with great riches, by his father Priamus to Polymnestor,
king of Thrace, in the Trojan war time: he after some years, hearing
the overthrow of Priamus, for to make the treasure his own, murdereth
the child: the body is taken up by Hecuba: she the same day findeth
a slight to be revenged most cruelly of the tyrant: where now would
one of our tragedy writers begin, but with the delivery of the child?
Then should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I know not how many
years, and travel numbers of places. But where doth Euripides?
[Footnote: In his _Hecuba_.] Even with the finding of the body, leaving
the rest to be told by the spirit of Polydorus. This need no further
to be enlarged, the dullest wit may conceive it. But besides these
gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor
right comedies: mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so
carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a
part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion.
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