The causes and defign of any action conftitute the beginning of it: the effect of fuch caufes, and the difficulties attending the execution of fuch defign, are the middle of it; and the unravelling or obviating thefe difficulties are the end of it.' It is not our business here to contend, whether Shakespeare be, or be not, defenfible in this particular; it is enough for us to enquire how far our Editor hath actually defended him. Laying authorities however afide, we cannot, on the principles of commonfenfe, conceive, how any dramatic Writer can be justly said to have preserved the unity of action, who hath confeffedly fhewn no regard to thofe of time and place; * with which we apprehend it to be very ftrictly connected. Certain at least it is, that, if any confiderable time fhould elapfe between, or space divide, the two parts of an action, we should be more apt to confider them as two diftinct and different actions, than as united parts of one and the fame action. This will be made more evident by our enquiry into the nature of these unities, and their effentiality to the drama. Before we enter on this point, however, we shall make fome remarks on the supposed neceffity, on which, Dr. Johnfon conceives, the obfervation of these unities is founded. To enable the Reader fully to comprehend the fubject in difpute, we fhall quote the whole of what our Editor hath advanced on this curious topic; which we are the more readily led to do, on account of his own fuggestion, that it is not dogmatically but deliberatively, written; and may recall the principles of the drama to a new examination. The neceffity of obferving the unities of time and place arifes from the fuppofed neceffity of making the drama credible. The critics hold it impoffible, that an action of months or years can be poffibly believed to pafs in three hours; or that the spectator can fuppofe himself to fit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between diftant Kings, while armies are levied and towns befieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they faw courting his miftrefs, fhall lament the untimely fall of his fon. The mind revolts from evident falfe→ hood, and fiction lofes its force when it departs from the refemblance of reality. From the narrow limitation of time neceffarily arifes the contraction of place. The spectator, who knows that he faw the first act at Alexandria, cannot fuppofe that he fees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have tranfported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that * Our Editor admits that Shakespeare hath fhewn no regard to the unities of time and place. place place cannot change itself; that what was a houfe cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Pertepolis. Such is the triumphant language with which a critic 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 unquestion able principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his underftanding pronounces to be falfe. It is falfe, that any reprefentation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a fingle moment, was ever credited. The objection arifing from the impoffibility of paffing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, fuppofes, that when the play opens the fpectator 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 Actium. Delufion, if delufion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the fpectator 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 reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may defpife the circumfcriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reafon why a mind thus wandering in extafy fhould count the clock, or why an hour fhould not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the ftage a field. The truth is, that the fpectators are always in their fenfes, and know, from the first act to the laft, that the ftage is only affage, 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 space to represent first 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 fo much of the action as is reprefented, 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 reprefented, in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; REV. Oct. 1765. X we we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits imitations of fucceffive actions, and why may not the fecond imitation reprefent an action that happened years after the firft; if it be fo connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene Time is, of all modes of exiftence, moft obfequious to the imagination; a laple 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." Plaufible as thefe arguments may at firft fight appear, we will venture to fay there is hardly one of them that does not seem falfe, or foreign to the purpofe. We apprehend that the affumption, on which our Editor proceeds, is not true. The obfcrvation of thefe unities may be neceffary without requiring the dramatic fable in its materiality (as this writer terms it) to be either credited or credible. It is not requifite, in order to justify the neceffity of fuch obfervation, that the Spectator fhould really imagine himself one hour in Alexandria and the next at Rome; or that he should actually believe the tranfactions of months and years to pafs in a few hours. The dramatic unities if neceffary, are neceffary to fupport the opparent probabilty, not the actual credibility of the drama. Our learned Editor may not probably diftinguish the difference; but Cicero will tell him nihil eft tam INCREDIBILE, quod non dicendo fiat PROBABILE: and if fuch be the power of oratory, can we doubt that a fimilar effect is produced by theatrical reprefentation? Now, it is the fenfes and the paffions, and not the imagination and underflanding, that are in both thefe cafes immediately affected. We do not pretend to fay that the spectators are not always in their fenfes; or that they do not know (if the queftion were put to them) that the ftage is only a ftage, and the players only players. But we will venture to fay, they are often fo intent on the fcene, as to be abfent with regard to every thing elfe. A fpectator, properly affected by a dramatic reprefentation, makes no reflections about the fiction or the reality of it, fo long as the action proceeds without grofsly offending, or palpably impofing on the fenfes. It is very true that a perfon, going to Drury-lane to fee the Tragedy of Venice Preferved, knows, when he places himself in the pit, that he is in the theatre at London, and not in Venice. But the curtain is no fooner drawn up than he begins to be interested in the bufinefs of the fcene, the orcheftra vanishes, and the views of St. Mark and the Rialto difpofe him (not to think how he came there but) to fee and hear what is to be done and faid there. When his attention is fully engaged to the fable, and his paffions affected by the difrefs of the characters, he is ftill farther removed from his own character character and fituation; and may be conceived quatenus a spectator, to be rather at Venice than at London. The image of Mr. Garrick, it is true, is painted on the retina of his eye, and the voice of Mrs. Cibber mechanically affects the tympanum of his ear: but it is as true alfo that he fees only the transports of Jaffier and liftens only to the ravings of Belvidera. And yet there is no frenzy, no calenture in the cafe; the man may be as much in his fenfes as Horace, when he fuppofed the fame deception might happen to himself, under the like influence of theatrical magic: Ille per extentum funem mihi poffe videtur Ut magus; et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis. The fpectator is unquestionably deceived; but the deception goes no farther than the paffions, it affects our fenfibility but not our understanding and is by no means fo powerful a delufion as to affect our belief. There is a fpecies of probability, which is neceffary to be adhered to, even to engage the attention of the fenfes, and affect our paffions; but this regards the reprefentation and not the materiality of the fable. The incredulus odi, of Horace, hath been cited with too great latitude of conftruction. It can hardly be fuppofed that the poet fhould ftigmatize himself for incredulity, merely because he could not believe that Progne was metamorphofed into a bird, or Cadmus into a ferpent. Or, fuppofing he might, why fhould he ufe the verb odi? Why should he hate or deteft a thing merely because he thought it incredible? It is natural indeed to hate whatever offends, or is fhocking to, the fenfes. The truth is, thefe terms are directly applied to the form, or reprefentation, and not to the materiality of the fable; as is evident on perusing the context. The whole paffage runs thus ; Aut agitur res in Scenis, aut acta refertur. We find no objection made to the credibility of these fables in themselves, (for on this the auditor may not give himself the trouble to bestow a fingle reflection) but to the unfeemlinefs or improbability that muft neceffarily attend their representation on the ftage: by which means the fenfes would be offended with a palpable abfurdity, not the understanding be imposed on by a X 2 falfehood, falfehood. For he allows that the very fame things may be agreeably related which will not bear to be reprefented.-But to return to our Editor. That the judgment never mistook any dramatic reprefentation we readily admit; but that our fenfes frequently do, is certain, from the effect it hath on our paffions. Nay, Dr. Johnfon himself, after all the pains he takes to prove the drama abfolutely incredible, is reduced, for want of making this neceffary diftinction, to confefs that it really is credited. It will be afked, fays he, how the drama moves, if it is not credited? It is credited with all the credit due to a drama.' The method he takes, to evade this evident contradiction, is, by adopting the fophiftry of thofe philofophers, who strive to account for the emotions of pity, gratitude, generosity and all the nobler paffions, from a retrofpect to that of felf-love. The drama is credited, fays Dr. Johnfon, whenever it moves, as a juft picture of a real original; as reprefenting to the audifor 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 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.' Now nothing is more certain than that thofe spectators, who are most affected by dramatic reprefentation are ufually the leaft capable of making a comparison between the picture and the original. There are alfo few auditors that can put themfelves in the place of the characters reprefented; and we believe fill fewer who are moved because they reflect that they themselves are expofed to the evils reprefented on the stage. The audience are moved by mere mechanical motives; they laugh and cry from mere fympathy at what a moment's refiction would very often prevent them from laughing or crying at all. If there be any fallacy, continues our Editor, 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 prefence of mifery, as a mother weeps over This language is not quite fo correct as might be expected from a writer fo capable of exprelling himself philofophically. The heart is often affected without any appeal to the judgment: nor is it neceffary, in order to work upon our fenfiuity, to addrefs the understanding. This is more frequently and more easily done by addreffing the paffions immediately through the fenfes. † this an accurate ufe of the verb remember? Can we be properly fid to remember what is yet to come, or what may never come at all? The meaning is, that the recollects the precept or maxim which inculcates the probability of death's depriving her of her child: but this is interfely expreffed. Indeed this preface is not, in general, written with that precision and accuracy of tyle, which diftingu fhes fome other of this celebrated Author's writings. |