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 embassadors 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 it's 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 at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he sees the next at 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 Shakspeare, 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 it's 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 the 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 preparations for war: we know that we are neither in Rome, nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates, nor Lucullus, is 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. '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 himself feel, if he were to do or suffer, what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflexion 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 exposed. 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 possibility, than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murthers and treason 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 supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness: but we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the history of Henry V.; yet no man takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A dramatic exhibition is a book, recited with concomitants that increase or diminish it's effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page: imperial tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what voice, or what A gesture, can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy of Cato? '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 revolutions of an empire. Whether Shakspeare knew the Unities, and rejected them by design or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, and useless to inquire. 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 it's variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by 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 in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive become the comprehensive genius of Shakspeare; and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire : -Non usque adeò permiscuit imis Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli |