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 paffing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, fuppofes, that when the play opens the fpectator really imagines himfelf 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 fpectator can be once per uaded, 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 state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumfcriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecftafy fhould count the clock, or why an hour fhould 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 juft gefture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to fome action, and an action must be be in fome place; but the different actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the abfurdity of allowing that fpace 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 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 against 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 second imitation represent 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 existence, moft obfequious to the imagination; a lapfe of years is as easily conceive 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 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 ourfelves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the poffibility than fuppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when the remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness 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 landscape, the trees are not fupposed capable to give us fhade, or the fountains coolness but we confider, how we fhould be pleased with such fountains playing beside 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 Agincourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increase 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 gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the foliloquy of Cato, A play 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 fhorter 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 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, impossible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counfels and admonitions of fcholars and criticks, 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 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 Yet when I fpeak thus flightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced againft me; before fuch authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present question one of those that are to be decided by mere authority, but because it is to be fufpected, that these precepts have not been fo eafily 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 boaft of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not effential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes 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 fhewn, rather what is poffible, than what is neceffary. He that, without diminution of any other excellence, fhall preferve all the unities unbroken, deferves the like applaufe with the architect, who fhall difplay all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its ftrength; 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 almost frighted at my own temerity; and when I eftimate the fame and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, |