...the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in extasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not...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...

...of the inflexible neoclassical position in the well-known passage from his "Preface to Shakespeare": "The truth is, that the spectators are always in their...act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players." 5. I have argued that there is a common metaphysical grounding...

...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...act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players < Co/2 3 1 > . They come to hear a certain number of lines recited...

...and literature. What Dr. Johnson had to say about the dramatic unities seems also to apply to novels: The truth is that the spectators are always in their...act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players .... It will be asked how the drama moves, if it is not credited....

...Most playgoers, however, are capable of the kind of dual consciousness described by Samuel Johnson: "the spectators are always in their senses, and know,...act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players." 44 If Johnson is correct, spectators would not only have shared...

...the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering3 in extasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture4 of the brains that can make the stage a field. The truth is, that the spectators are always...

...thought and behaviour in the face of artistic phenomena? Samuel Johnson's eighteenth-century answer was 'The truth is, that the spectators are always in their...act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players' [13.30]. One's knowledge of the nature of an artistic activity,...

...Johnson stresses the ficri tiousness of Shakespearean drama, and when he insists that the spectators 'know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players', he is denying that the play asks us to take it for real life.6...

...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...calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field. (p. 70) The old argument for the unities had been basically a logical one. If we believe ourselves...

...dramatic illusion, seem to disagree only within parameters set by the Poetics. While Johnson maintains that "the spectators are always in their senses, and...act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players" ("Preface to Shakespeare," Selections, 24), Coleridge insists that...