fuppofe that he sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in fo fhort a time, have tranfported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itfelf; that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Perfepolis. Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the mifery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without refiftance or reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of ShakeSpeare, that he affumes, as an unquestionable principle, a pofition, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be falfe. It is falfe, that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a fingle moment, was ever credited. The objection arifing from the impoffibility of pasfing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this, may imagine more. He that can take the ftage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Altium. Delufion, if delufion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the fpectator can be once perfuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander Alexander and Cæfar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharfalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumfcriptions of terreftrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in extasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field. The truth is, that the spectators are always in their fenfes, and know, from the first act to the last, that the ftage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with juft gefture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to fome action, and an action must be in fome place; but the different actions that compleat a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the abfurdity of allowing that fpace to reprefent firft Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre. By fuppofition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time required by the fable elapfes for the most part between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is reprefented, the real and poetical duration is the fame. If, in the first act, preparations for war againft Mithridates are reprefented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without abfurdity, be reprefented, in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits fucceffive imitations of fucceffive actions, and why may not the fecond imitation represent an action that happened years after the first; if it be fo connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene. Time is, of all modes of existence, most obfequious to the imagination; a lapfe of years is as eafily conceived as a paffage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only fee their imitation. It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a juft picture of a real original; as reprefenting to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or fuffer what is there feigned to be fuffered or to be done. The reflection that ftrikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be expofed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the poffibility than fuppose the prefence of mifery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when the remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousnefs of fiction; if we thought murders and treafons real, they would please no more, Imitations Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not fuppofed capable to give us fhade, or the fountains coolness; but we confider, how we fhould be pleased with fuch fountains playing befide us, and fuch woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the history of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page, imperial tragedy is always lefs. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what voice or what gefture can hope to add dignity or force to the foliloquy of Cato. A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident, that the action is not fupposed to be real, and it follows that between the acts a longer or fhorter time may be allowed to pafs, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pafs in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire. Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by defign, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impoffible to decide, and ufelefs to inquire. We may reasonably fuppofe, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counfels counfels and admonitions of scholars and crticks, and that he at laft deliberately perfifted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is effential to the fable, but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arife evidently from false affumptions, and, by circumfcribing the extent of the drama, leffen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: Nor, if fuch another poet could arife, fhould I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act paffed at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehenfive genius of Shakespeare, and fuch cenfures are fuitable to the minute and flender criticism of Voltaire: Non ufque adeo permifcuit imis Longus fumma dies, ut non, fi voce Metelli Yet when I speak thus flightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before fuch authorities I am afraid to ftand, not that I think the prefent question one of thofe that are to be decided by mere authority, but because it is to be fufpected, that these precepts have not been so easily received but for better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The refult of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not effential to a juft dra ma, |
