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individualifed in Shakefpeare, and this fact marks an entirely new era in 
the hiftory of the drama. In the writings of our great bard, nearly all the 
peculiarities of the older national drama are preferved, even fome which may 
be perhaps conlidered as its defects, but carried to a degree of perfection 
which they had never attained before. The drollery, which, as we have 
feen, could not be difpenled with even in the religious myfteries and 
miracle-plays, had become fo neceffary, that it could not be difpenfed with 
in tragedy. Its omiflion belonged to a later period, when the foreign 
dramatitts became objects of imitation in England. But in the earlier 
drama, thefe fcenes of drollery feem frequently to have no connection 
whatever with the general plot, while Shaketpeare always interweaves 
them ikilfully with it, and they feem to form an integral and neceffary 
part of it.