This was the
characteristic end of the old comedy. The heavy father, or cantankerous
guardian, who for four acts and a half had stood between the lovers,
suddenly changed his mind, and all was well. Even by our ancestors this
was reckoned a rather too simple method of disentanglement. Lisideius,
in Dryden's dialogue,[1] in enumerating the points in which the French
drama is superior to the English notes that--
You never see any of their plays end with a conversion, or simple
change of will, which is the ordinary way which our poets use to end
theirs. It shew little art in the conclusion of a dramatick poem,
when they who have hindered the felicity during the four acts,
desist from it in the fifth, without some powerful cause to take
them off their design.
The remark of Lisideius is suggested by a passage in Corneille, who
instances, as an apt and artistic method of bringing about the
conversion of a heavy father, that his daughter's lover should earn his
gratitude by rescuing him from assassination!
Conversions, closely examined, will be found to fall into two classes:
changes in volition, and changes in sentiment.
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