The former exhorts him to follow her exalted vocation, but Comedy drags him away, and he seems to yield willingly, though endeavouring to excuse himself, and pleading that he is forced.

The art historian Horace Walpole provided the earliest known description of David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy.

[3][2]: 261 David Garrick stands in the centre of the painting wearing an Anthony van Dyck costume, against a rural landscape with a field and woodland.

[4]: 294  Comedy has slightly tousled fair hair, resembling the bacchante drawn by Peter Paul Rubens.

[4]: 296 Art historians often compare the painting to a scene in Greek mythology in which the god Hercules has to choose between Virtue and Pleasure.

[2]: 269 David Garrick was famous as both a tragedian and comedian, and his earliest known association with the Muses of Tragedy and Comedy was in a 1747 poem by William Whitehead.

[5]: 140  The historian David Mannings has suggested that the painting's composition was inspired by Guido Reni's Lot and his Daughters Leaving Sodom.

[6] Edward Fisher created a mezzotint for the painting in 1762 before he exhibited it in May 1762[7] at the Society of Artists in 1762 as Mr. Garrick, between two muses of tragedy and comedy.

[6] Fisher published his mezzotint in November 1762,[7] having the inscription "Reddere personae scit convenientia cuique", meaning "he knows how to give to each what is appropriate".