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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 stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delufion, if delufion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once perfuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Cæfar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharfalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a ftate of elevation above the reach of reafon, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in extafy fhould 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 fpectators are always in their fenfes, and know, from the first act to the laft, that the stage is only a ftage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gefture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in fome place; but the diffe rent actions that compleat a ftory may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the abfurdity of allowing that space to represent firft Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre.

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By fuppofition, as place is introduced, time may be tended; the time required by the fable elapfes for the most part between the acts; for, of fo much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the fame. If

in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without abfurdity, be represented 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 second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be fuppofed to intervené. Time is, of all modes of existence, moft obfequious to the imagination; a lapse 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 just picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himfelf feel, if he were to do or fuffer what is there feigned to be fuffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes 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 fuppofe the presence 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 confciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.

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 land

scape, the trees are not supposed capable to give us fhade, or the fountains coolness; but we confider, how we should be pleafed with fuch fountains playing befide us, and fuch. woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the hiftory of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agencourt. A dramatic exhibition is a book

recited with concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. Familliar comedy is often more powerful on the ftage, 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 fuppofed to be real, and it follows that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pafs, and that no more account of space or duration is to to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire.

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design, 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 and admonitions of scholars and critics, 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 arise evidently from false affumptions, and, by circumfcribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not obferved: 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 pofitive, become the comprehenfive genius of Shakespeare, and such cenfures are fuitable to the minute and flender criticism of Voltaire :

Non ufque adeo permiscuit imis

Longus fumma dies, ut non, fi voce Metelli

Serventur leges, malint a Cæfare tolli.

Yet when I fpeak thus flightly of dramatic 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 queftion one of those that are to be decided by mere authority, but becaufe 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 drama, that though they may fometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be facrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice obfervation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiofity, as the product of fuperfluous and oftentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is poffible, than what is necessary.

He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preferve all the unities unbroken, deferves the like applause with the architect, who fhall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its Arength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play, are to copy nature and inftruct life.

Perhaps, what I have here, not dogmatically, but deliberately written, may recal the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almoft frightened at my own

temerity; and when I estimate the fame and the ftrength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to fink down in reverential filence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he faw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno head the besiegers.

Those whom my arguments cannot perfuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakespeare, will eafily, if they confider the condition of his life, make fome allowance for his ignorance.

Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not worse or better for the circumstances of the author, yet as there is always a filent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the enquiry, how far man may extend his defigns, or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiofity is always busy to difcover the inftruments, as well as to furvey the workmanship, to know how much is to be afcribed to original powers, and how much to cafual and adventitious help. The palaces of Peru and Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who could forbear to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they were built without the use of iron?

The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet fruggling to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been tranfplanted hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages had been fuccessfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacer, and More; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Afcham, Greek was now taught to boys in the princi

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