events, and Shakespeare is the poet of nature: But his plan has commonly what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are perhaps some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation. To the Unities of Time and Place he has shown no regard, and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of Corneille, they have very generally received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to the poet than pleasure to the auditor. The necessity of observing the Unities of Time and Place arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The critics hold it impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act in Alexandria, cannot suppose that he sees the next in Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis. 'Such is the triumphant language with which a critic exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever credited. 'The objection arising from the impossibility of passing 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 stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once persuaded that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Cæsar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, 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 circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make a stage a field. The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre. By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time required by the fable elapses for the most part between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without absurdity, 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 [sic] before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive 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 supposed to intervene. Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation. . . A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident that the action is not supposed to be real, and it follows that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pass, 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 pass in an hour the life of a hero or the revolution of an empire. Whether Shakespeare knew the unities and rejected them by design, or deviated from them in happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and critics, and that he at last deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is essential to the fable, but Unity of Action, and as the Unities of Time and Place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known to him, or not observed: Nor, if such another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice, and his next at Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire. ... The result of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is that the Unities of Time and Place are not essential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostentations art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what is necessary. He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play, are to copy nature and instruct life. Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written, may recall the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almost frightened at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame and strength of those who maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the besiegers.' It will not be out of place, I trust, to give here an extract from the Dramaturgie of LESSING, the finest Shakespeare-scholar Germany has given us. It was written in 1767, two years after Dr Johnson's Preface, just quoted, and is one of those sledgehammer blows, with which, delivered in the interest of Shakespeare, Lessing demolished Voltaire and Voltaire's influence in Germany: . It is one thing to circumvent rules, another to observe them. The French do 'the former, the latter was understood only by the ancients. Unity of Action was the first dramatic law of the ancients; Unity of Time and 'Place were mere consequences of the former which they would scarcely have ob'served more strictly than exigency required had not the combination with the Chorus ' arisen. For since their actions required the presence of a large body of people and 'this concourse always remained the same, who could go no further from their dwell⚫ings nor remain absent longer than is customary to do from mere curiosity, they were 'almost obliged to make the scene of Action one and the same spot, and confine the Time to one and the same day. They submitted bonâ fide to this restriction; but 'with a suppleness of understanding such that in seven cases out of nine they gained 'more than they lost thereby. For they used this restriction as a reason for simpli'fying the action and to cut away all that was superfluous, and thus, reduced to essen'tials, it became only the ideal of an action which was developed most felicitously in 'this form which required the least addition from circumstances of time and place. 'The French, on the contrary, who found no charms in true Unity of Action, who had been spoilt by the wild intrigues of the Spanish School, before they had learnt 'to know Greek simplicity, regarded the Unity of Time and Place not as conse'quences of Unity of Action, but as circumstances absolutely needful to the repre'sentation of an action, to which they must therefore adapt their richer and more 'complicated actions with all the severity required in the use of a Chorus, which, 'however, they had totally abolished When they found how difficult, nay, at times, 'how impossible this was, they made a truce with the tyrannical rules against which 'they had not the courage to rebel. Instead of a single place, they introduced an ' uncertain place, under which we could imagine now this, now that spot; enough, if the places combined were not too far apart and none required special scenery, so 'that the same scenery could fit the one about as well as the other. Instead of the 'unity of a day, they substituted unity of duration, and a certain period during which 'no one spoke of sunrise or sunset, or went to bed, or at least did not go to bed more than once; however much might occur in the space, they allowed it to pass as one day. 'Now no one would have objected to this; for unquestionably even thus, excellent 'plays can be made, and the proverb says: hew the wood where it is smallest. But 'I must also allow my neighbour the same privilege. I must not always show 'him the thickest part, and cry, "You must cut there! That is where I cut!" Thus the French critics all exclaim, especially when they speak of the dramatic 'works of the English. What a to-do they then make of regularity, that regularity 'which they had made so easy for themselves! But I am weary of dwelling on this 'point! 'As far as I am concerned, Voltaire's and Maffei's Merope may extend over eight 'days and the scene be laid in seven places in Greece! if only it had the beauties to 'make me forget these pedantries! The strictest observation of rules cannot outweigh 'the smallest fault in a character.'-[Mr Beasley's and Miss Zimmern's translation, Bohn's Series, p. 369.] DURATION OF ACTION IN the fierce light which beats' on Shakespeare's plays the time over which the action extends has not escaped scrutiny. To count the evening and morning of the First day, and of the Second, and of the Third, and so on, requires, it might be supposed, no great skill beyond a careful reading of the play, and an elementary knowledge of arithmetic. But in carrying out this simple process it is found that something more is needed than a mere enumeration on the fingers; a strange interlacing of past and present time is revealed; yesterdays are crowded into to-day, and to-day is swept backward into the past; yet no jar is noted in the steady onward movement of time. In Othello, probably the most striking example, by counting the time in the right butterwoman's rank to market, we find that from the hour when Othello lands in Cyprus to the minute when his hands stop the breath of Desdemona, barely thirtysix hours of solar (not dramatic) time have passed. In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock's bond for three months runs its full course in three days, yet nothing amiss is perceived. Something more, then, than simple arithmetic is needed. This strange compression of days into hours, and expansion of hours into days, cannot be fortuitous, it must be the effect of art. It behooves us, therefore, to trace, if we can, the artist's work. To all who have read the preceding volumes of this edition, what has just been said is familiar enough. The subject, therefore, has been only thus briefly recalled. In the present play, owing to its plot, but little necessity exists for any unusual treatment of dramatic time. Like other Tales,' its march is direct and onward. And yet there is one regard wherein we feel the need of Shakespeare's thaumaturgy. A pronounced feature of the play is the sudden onset of the jealousy of Leontes. It cannot be overlooked. It strikes every reader. There is no gradual development of the passion, as in Othello; there is no growth; almost as swift as thought Leontes is at the height of frenzy. Whether this is intentional on Shakespeare's part, or carelessness, or because, as has been suggested by DEIGHTON, the novel of Greene, wherein the jealousy is of a gradual growth, was so familiar to Shakespeare that he imagined it was as familiar to his auditors, no one can ever know. But, after the attack of mania has once set in, I think we can detect an intention to make us lose sight of the electric flash with which it apparently began, and, apart from the memory of its utter groundlessness, which neither can, nor should, be obliterated, to make us glide insensibly into a belief that the jealousy is really the result of long observation by Leontes, who has been for many a day past watching the conduct of Hermione, and that her victory over the resolution of Polixenes to depart, was all that was needed to set the long smouldering passion in a blaze. It almost seems as though in this play Shakespeare had disdained to show us a gradual growth of jealousy as in Othello, but that, after imparting to its earliest manifestation a dramatic suddenness, he was conscious of his power to sway us at his will and to make us accept this jealousy of Leontes as really gradual and natural, that is, as natural as such an unnatural frenzy can be made. That Shakespeare did not wholly over-rate his power is found in the fact that some critics have gone so far as to suppose that Hermione had been actually imprudent in her behaviour toward Polixenes. The first note transferring the present into the past is struck in an Aside, where Leontes says, in his conversation with Camillo, 'tis far gone when I shall gust it 'last!' Be it that this is merely Leontes's imagination, it conveys, nevertheless, an impression of a gradual growth of gossip, busy for many a day throughout the palace and even abroad, concerning acts of the Queen in the past, which Leontes is the last to notice. The impression may be but a mere vanishing touch, yet it is felt and leaves a mark. Again, Leontes speaks in wrath of 'seeing a game played home,' and that rumour cannot be mute,' and then, his frenzy at white heat, he unfolds picture after picture which his memory supplies of scenes, which, grossly misinterpreted as we know they must be, we have to accept as drawn from actions which happened before the opening of the play : Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Of laughter, with a sigh ?—a note infallible Of breaking honesty,-horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? It may be urged that it is only now, in the retrospect, that Leontes thus puts wicked interpretation on the innocent actions of Hermione. How do we know? The mere fact that he recalls them, shows that they must have made some impression on him at the time. We all know that they are the wild distortions of madness, but when we listen to the play, these allusions serve the purpose of lessening the suddenness of the madman's jealousy. Although we do not actually see the growth of his jealousy, what might have been its stages are made to pass in review before us. Herein lies the only need that I can detect, in this play, of any art in the management of dramatic time, and herein also the only evidences of it. DEIGHTON has cited nearly all of these passages as indications that the growth of Leontes's jealousy had been really gradual. I have merely added their effect in regard to the dramatic time. Mr P. A. DANIEL has made a Time-Analysis' of this Play (New Shakspere Soc. Trans., 1877-79, p. 177) whereof the synopsis is as follows: |