3. 6 John Fletcher et la tragi-comédie pastorale

‘ If you be not reasonably assured of your knowledge in this kind of poem, lay down the book, or read this, which I would wish had been the prologue. It is a pastoral tragi-comedy, which the people seeing when it was played, […], concluded to be a play of country hired shepherds […], sometimes laughing together, and sometimes killing one another ; and, missing Whitsun-ales, cream, wassail, and morris-dances, began to be angry. […] Understand, therefore, a pastoral to be a representation of shepherds and shepherdesses with their actions and passions, which must be such as may agree with their natures, at least not exceeding former fictions and vulgar traditions; […]But you are ever to remember shepherds to be such as all the ancient poets, and modern, of understanding, have received them ; that is, the owners of flocks, and not hirelings. A tragi-comedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy , yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy. ⁵⁴³ ’

‘ You may here find passions raised to that excellent pitch and by such insinuating degrees that you shall not chuse bu consent, & go along with them, finding your self at last grown insensibly the very same person you read, and the standing admiring the subtile Trackes of your engagement. Fall on a Scene of love and you will never believe the writers could have the least roome left in their soules for another passion, peruse a Scene of manly Rage, and you would sweare they cannot be exprest by the same hands, but both are so excellently wrought, you must confesse none, but the same hands, could worke them.
Would thy Melancholy have a cure? thou shalt laugh at Democritus himselfe, and but resting one piece of this Comick variety, finde thy exalted fancie in Elizium; And when thou art sick of this cure, (for excesse of delight may too much dilate thy soule) thou shalt meete almost in every leafe a soft purling passion or spring of sorrow so powerfully wrought high by the teares of innocence, and wronged Lovers, it shall perswade thy eyes to weepe into the streame, and yet smile when they contribute to their owne ruines. ⁵⁴⁵ ’