ABSTRACT
Entia non sint multiplicanda praeter necessitas is a good philosophic maxim, an excellent principle of literary criticism: kinds, categories, genres should not proliferate in order to tidy up our muddy thinking. The compromise between the two great forms of drama is of course found early: Plautus wrote of ‘tragico-comoedia’ and this is echoed by theorists in the sixteenth century, in Florio’s ‘tragi-comedia’ and, with derogatory overtones, in Sidney’s Apology, when he denies that true dramatic ‘sportfulness’ is to be obtained by ‘mungrell Tragi-comedie’. All this word-play is an attempt to reconcile forms of behaviour, dramatic philosophies, that are instinctively felt to be opposites, irreconcilable. It is particularly interesting that Philippe Quinault, an undistinguished but highly ‘professional’ writer should have formulated with some finality for the French theatre of the seventeenth century, the nature of the dramatic categories its theorists were intent on maintaining in their purity.
