The ideal tragedy--and in this Sidney closely follows the Italians--is an imitation of a noble action, in the representation of which it stirs "admiration and commiseration,"[506] and teaches the uncertainty of the world and the weak foundations upon which golden roofs are built. It makes kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humors. Sidney's censure of the contemporary drama is that it outrages the grave and weighty character of tragedy, its elevated style, and the dignity of the personages represented, by mingling kings and clowns, and introducing the most inappropriate buffoonery. There are, indeed, one or two examples of tragi-comedy in ancient literature, such as Plautus's _Amphitryon_;[507] but never do the ancients, like the English, match hornpipes and funerals.[508] The English dramas are neither true comedies nor true tragedies, and disregard both the rules of poetry and honest civility. Tragedy is not tied to the laws of history, and may arrange and modify events as it pleases; but it is certainly bound by the rules of poetry. It is evident, therefore, that the _Defence of Poesy_, as a French writer has observed, "gives us an almost complete theory of neo-classic tragedy, a hundred years before the _Art Poetique_ of Boileau: the severe separation of poetic forms, the sustained dignity of language, the unities, the _tirade_, the _recit_, nothing is lacking."[509] Ben Jonson pays more attention to the theory of comedy than to that of tragedy; but his conception of the latter does not differ from Sidney's. The parts, or divisions, of comedy and tragedy are the same, and both have on the whole a common end, to teach and delight; so that comic as well as tragic poets were called by the Greeks [Greek: didaskaloi].[510] The external conditions of the drama require that it should have the equal division into acts and scenes, the true number of actors, the chorus, and the unities.[511] But Jonson does not insist on the strict observance of these formal requirements, for the history of the drama shows that each successive poet of importance has gradually and materially altered the dramatic structure, and there is no reason why the modern poet may not do likewise. Moreover, while these requirements may have been regularly observed in the ancient state and splendor of dramatic poetry, it is impossible to retain them now and preserve any measure of popular delight. The outward forms of the ancients, therefore, may in part be disregarded; but there are certain essentials which must be observed by the tragic poet in whatsoever age he may flourish. These are, "Truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elocution, fulness and frequency of sentence."[512] In other words, Jonson's model is the oratorical and sententious tragedy of Seneca, with its historical plots and its persons of high estate.