Too Long: Fielding's relationship to "tragedy" is complicated. As a comic writer with a strong classical education, Fielding would have been taught to see tragedy as the highest form of drama, with comedy next, and then, in the distance, farce. And yet, he writes farcical comedy--even his novels are bitingly comic, perhaps with the exception of Amelia. When he says that tragedy (the "Tragick Muse") has held the stage in thrall for "too long," he is both ironic and, in some sense, honest.

See also: "Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps" (line 3).