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Hugh Kelly, born poor and Irish, died poor and in London. But for about eight years he was famous and, by his moderate standards, rich. His circle of friends included Oliver Goldsmith, David Garrick, and Samuel Johnson. A successful journalist, novelist, and playwright, Kelly is remembered mainly for his six plays-five comedies and one tragedy. He specialized in sentimental or "weeping" comedies, as opposed to the "laughing" comedies of the Restoration wits. Sentimental comedy sets the heart over the head. According to Arthur Sherbo, in English Sentimental Drama (1957), these plays are artificial and improbable, appeal to the essential goodness of human nature, and greatly emphasize pathos. Kelly's plays contain all these features but, at their best moments, also have wit and verve. Kelly attempted to combine the best features of sentimental and comic drama. He describes his goals in the preface to The School for Wives:
His chief study has been to steer between the extremes of sentimental gloom, and the excesses of uninteresting levity; he has some laugh, yet he hopes he has also some lesson; and, as fashionable as it has been lately for the wits, even with his friend Mr.
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