Stanza 1: In this extended stanza, Fielding's tone is one of ironic mockery at the end of legitimate drama, represented by the stylized image of Tragedy. When he writes, "Too long the Tragick Muse hath aw'd the Stage, / And frightned Wives and Children with her Rage," Fielding says one thing but means another, almost directly contradictory to the appearing sense. In this case, he satirizes both the stylized image of tragedy as a blustering, specious form of spectacle and the contemporary taste that has rendered tragedy obsolete, tired, "[t]oo long" on the stage. Tragedy--or just 'good drama'--has been 'reduced' to the mechanics of spectacle: things brought on stage purely for the cheap thrill they bring. What I am referring to as the 'mechanics of spectacle' is threefold; first, it signifies the contrived and inflated action on the stage (the "Ghosts, Rapes, [and] Murders" that pain "tender Hearts"), action which has fallen into a recipe for thrills, much like the appalling American lust for action films decidedly lacking in plot. Second, it implies the literal fascination with new mechanical effects, one of the most notorious being the addition of claps of "Thunder" and lightening that "terrifie with Sound"--much like the appalling American lust for films only distinguished by their special effects and computer animation. Third, it refers to the image of the audience reacting to these spectacles in a mechanical, expected fashion--when, for instance, a "skill'd Actress" weeps, those in the "Box and Gallery" automatically "melt in Tears," or when an actor properly identified as "Heroick" declaims some empty nationalist drivel, the "generous Briton" cannot refuse to applaud. As Fielding writes, theatre in the 1730s--that is, not only actors and managers, but also the audience--is overrun by "tame Animals" designed only "for Show" and spectacle, lacking in "Judgment" and real emotion. The audience becomes just as much a part of the spectacle as the actors and the wild stage effects: all are cued for action by some external logic. A proper response is really only a matter of "Chance," for the education of that response is predicated on mere gross habituation. "Tame Animals," we must remember, have neither judgment nor emotion. In short, this is a scathing moral indictment of contemporary performance both social and aesthetic.