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 reafon, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may defpife the circumfcriptions of terreftrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecftacy should 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 spectators are always in their fenfes, and know, from the first act to the laft, that the ftage is only a stage, 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 moft part between the acts; for, of fo much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the fame. If, in the firft 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; 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 represent an action that happened years after the firft; if it be fo connected with it, that nothing but time can be fuppofed to intervene. Time is, of all modes of existence, most 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 afked, 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 reprefenting 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 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 fuppofe 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 confcioufnefs of fiction; 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 coolnefs; but we confider, how we should be pleased with fuch 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 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 fpace 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, impoffible to decide, and useless to inquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rofe to notice, he did not want the counfels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last delib erately 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 arife evidently from false affumptions, and, by cirumfcribing the extent of the drama, leffen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: nor, if fuch another poet could arife, fhould I very vehemently reproach him, that his firft act paffed at Venice, and his next at 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 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 ftand, not that I think the prefent question one of thofe that are to be decided by mere authority, but because it is to be fufpected, that thefe precepts have not been fo easily received, but for better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The refult of my inquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boaft of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not effential to a juft drama, that though they may fometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be facrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and inftruction; 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 applause with the architect, who fhall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength; 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 almoft frighted at my own te merity; and, when I eftimate the fame and the strength of thofe that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to fink down in reverential filence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he faw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the befiegers. Thofe whom my arguments cannot perfuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakespeare, will eafily, if they confider the condition of his life, make fome allowance for his ignorance. Every man's performances, to be rightly eftimated, must be compared with the ftate of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not worse or better for the circumstances of the author, yet as there is always a filent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the inquiry, how far man may extend his defigns, or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in what rank we fhall place any particular performance, curiofity is always busy to discover the inftruments, as well as to furvey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers, and how much to cafual and adventitious help. The palaces of Peru or Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who could forbear to view them with aftonfhment, who remembered that they were built without the use of iron ? The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet ftruggling to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages had been fuccefsfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacer, and More; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Afcham. Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to profeffed fcholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick was grofs and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment ftill valued for its rarity. Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people, newly awakened to literary curiofity, being yet unacquainted with the true state of things, knows not how to judge of that which is propofed as its resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances, is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The ftudy of those who then aspired to plebeian learning, was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume. The mind, which has feafted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no taste of the infipidity of truth. A play, which imitated only the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impreffion; he that wrote for fuch an audience, was under the neceffity of looking round for strange events and fabulous transactions; and that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unskilful curiofity. Our author's plots are generally borrowed from nov. els; and it is reasonable to fuppofe, that he chose the most popular, fuch as were read by many, and related by mare; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the story in their hands. The ftories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time acceffible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is fuppofed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain English profe, which the criticks have now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus. His English hiftories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by verfions, they fupplied him with new fubjects; he dilated fome of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by North. His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more eafily caught than by fentiment or argumentation; and fuch is the power of the marvellous, even over those who despise it, that every man finds his mind more ftrongly feized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer: others please us by particular speeches; but he always makes us anxious for the event, |