concatenated with another, and the conclufion follows by eafy confequence. There are perhaps fome incidents that might be fpared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general fyftem makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation.

To the unities of time and place3 he has shown no regard; and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they ftand will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of Corneille, they have very generally received, by difcovering that they have given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor.

The neceffity of obferving the unities of time and place arifes from the fuppofed neceffity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it impoffible, that an action of months or years can be poffibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the fpectator can fuppofe himfelf to fit in the theatre, while ambaffadors 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 mistress, fhall lament the untimely fall of his fon. The mind revolts from evident falfehood, and fiction lofes its

3

unities of time and place-] Mr. Twining, among his judicious remarks on the poetick of Ariftotle, obferves, that "with respect to the strict unities of time and place, no fuch rules were impofed on the Greek poets by the criticks, or by themselves; nor are impofed on any poet, either by the nature, or the end, of the dramatick imitation itself."

Ariftotle does not express a single precept concerning unity of place. This fupposed restraint originated from the hypercriticism of his French commentators. STEEVENS.

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 saw the first Act at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he fees the next at Rome, at a diftance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in fo fhort a time, have tranfported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a houfe cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Perfepolis.

Such is the triumphant language with which a critick 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 Shakspeare, that he affumes, as an unquestionable principle, a pofition, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be falfe. It is falfe, that any representation is mistaken 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 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 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 ecstasy fhould 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 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 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 space to represent firft 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 so much

So in the Epiftle Dedicatory to Dryden's Love Triumphant: "They who will not allow this liberty to a poet, make it a very ridiculous thing, for an audience to suppose themselves fometimes to be in a field, fometimes in a garden, and at other times in a chamber. There are not, indeed, so many absurdities in their fuppofition, as in ours; but 'tis an original abfurdity for the audience to fuppofe themselves to be in any other place, than in the very theatre in which they fit; which is neither a chamber, nor garden, nor yet a publick place of any business but that of the representation." STEEVENS.

of the action as is reprefented, the real and poetica duration is the fame. If, in the firft Act, preparations for war against Mithridates are reprefented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without abfurdity, 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 before us. The drama exhibits fucceffive 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 existence, moft obfequious to the imagination; a lapfe of years is as eafily conceived as a paffage of hours. In contemplation we eafily 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 juft picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or fuffer what is there feigned to be suffered 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 suppose the presence of mifery, 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 fic

tion; if we thought murders and treafons 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 fuppofed capable to give us fhade, or the fountains coolness; but we confider, how we fhould be pleased with such fountains playing befide us, and fuch woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the hiftory 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 gefture can hope to add dignity or force to the foliloquy of Cato?

A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident, that the action is not fupposed to be real; and it follows, that between the Acts a longer or fhorter time may be allowed to pafs, 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 defign, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impoffible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rofe to notice, he did not want the counfels and admonitions of fcholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately perfifted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance.