...which moves his writing from proto-tragedy into a "mingled" mode, becoming, like Shakespeare's drama, "compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real...combination; and expressing the course of the world" (Shakespeare, I, 66). This transformation is achieved in the Lives as it is in Shakespeare, through...

...tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary namre, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled...course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gam of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the moumer burying...

..."Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or critical sense, either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real...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...

...prose: Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind: exhibiting the real...another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hastening to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes...

...exhibiting the real state of sublunary 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 If we look closely at Johnson's "distinct kind," we shall see that it is not a new genre but a mixture...

...johnsoniana: Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind, exhibiting the real...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 [...]....

...life'. Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real...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...

...Shakespeare's plays were neither tragedies nor comedies "in the rigorous or critical sense," but rather: compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real...the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveler is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is...