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trans

their speeches being so many declamations, which tire us with the length; so that instead of persuading us to grieve for their imaginary heroes, we are concerned for our own trouble, as we are in tedious1 visits of bad company; we are in pain till they are gone. When the French stage came to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey; they are not Io so properly to be called plays, as long discourses of reason of state; and Polieucte in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons 2;* 15 nay, they account it the grace of their parts, and think themselves disparaged by the poet, if they may not twice or thrice in a play entertain the audience with a speech of an hundred lines. I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French; for as 20 we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious: and this I conceive to be one reason why comedies are more pleasing to us, and tragedies 25 to them. But to speak generally: it cannot be denied that short speeches and replies are more apt to move the passions and beget concernment in us, than the

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*Formerly an hour-glass was fixed on the pulpit in all our churches. (Malone.)

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other; for it is unnatural for any one in a gust of passion to speak long together, or for another in the same condition to suffer him, without interruption. Grief and passion are like floods raised in little brooks by a sudden rain; they are quickly up; and if the concernment be poured unexpectedly in upon us, it overflows us: but a long sober shower gives them leisure to run out as they came in, without troubling the ordinary current. As for comedy, repartee is one of its chiefest graces; the greatest 10 pleasure of the audience is a chace of wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed. And this our forefathers, if not we, have had in Fletcher's plays, to a much higher degree of perfection than the French poets can reasonably hope to reach1.

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'There is another part of Lisideius his discourse, in which he has rather excused our neighbours, than commended them; that is, for aiming only to make one person considerable in their plays. 'Tis very true what he has urged, that one character in all 20 plays, even without the poet's care, will have advantage of all the others; and that the design of the whole drama will chiefly depend on it. But this hinders not that there may be more shining characters in the play: many persons of a second magnitude, 25 nay, some so very near, so almost equal to the first, that greatness may be opposed to greatness, and all the persons be made considerable, not only by their quality, but their action. 'Tis evident that the more the persons are, the greater will be the variety of the 30 plot. If then the parts are managed so regularly,

1 can arrive at, A.

that the beauty of the whole be kept entire, and that the variety become not a perplexed and confused mass of accidents, you will find it infinitely pleasing to be led in a labyrinth of design, where you see 5 some of your way before you, yet discern not the end till you arrive at it. And that all this is practicable, I can produce for examples many of our English plays: as The Maid's Tragedy, The Alchemist, The Silent Woman: I was going to have named The 10 Fox", but that the unity of design seems not exactly observed in it; for there appear1 two actions in the play; the first naturally ending with the fourth act; the second forced from it in the fifth: which yet is the less to be condemned in him, because the dis15 guise of Volpone, though it suited not with his character as a crafty or covetous person, agreed well enough with that of a voluptuary; and by it the poet gained the end at which he aym'd2, the punishment of vice, and the reward of virtue, both which that disguise produced. So that to judge equally of it, it was an excellent fifth act, but not so naturally proceeding from the former.

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But to leave this, and pass to the latter part of Lisideius his discourse, which concerns relations: 25 I must acknowledge with him, that the French have reason to hide that part of the action which would occasion too much tumult on the stage, and to choose 5 rather to have it made known by narration to the audience. Farther, I think it very convenient, for 30 the reasons he has given, that all incredible actions

1

appears, A.

2 the end he aym'd at, A. 3 A om. both. * when they hide, A. 5 and choose, A.

:

were removed; but, whether custom has so insinuated itself into our countrymen, or nature has so formed them to fierceness, I know not; but they will scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horrour to be taken from them. And indeed, the indecency 5 of tumults is all which can be objected against fighting for why may not our imagination as well suffer itself to be deluded with the probability of it, as with any other thing in the play? For my part, I can with as great ease persuade myself that the 10 blows1 are given in good earnest, as I can, that they who strike them are kings or princes, or those persons which they represent. For objects of incredibility, Ca I would be satisfied from Lisideius, whether we have any so removed from all appearance of truth, as are 15 those of Corneille's Andromeden; a play which has been frequented the most of any he has writ. If the Perseus, or the son of an heathen god, the Pegasus, and the Monster, were not capable to choke a strong belief, let him blame any representation of 20 ours hereafter. Those indeed were objects of delight; yet the reason is the same as to the probability: for he makes it not a Ballette 2 or masque, but a play, which is to resemble truth. But for death, that it ought not to be represented, I have, besides the 25 arguments alledged by Lisideius, the authority of Ben Johnson, who has forborn it in his tragedies; for both the death of Sejanus and Catiline are related: though in the latter I cannot but observe one irregularity of that great poet; he has removed the 30 scene in the same act from Rome to Catiline's army, 1 the blowes which are struck, A.

2 Balette, C.

and from thence again to Rome; and besides, has allowed a very inconsiderable time, after Catiline's speech, for the striking of the battle, and the return of Petreius, who is to relate the event of it to the 5 senate which I should not animadvert on him, who was otherwise a painful observer of тò прéñоν, or the decorum of the stage, if he had not used extreme severity in his judgment on the incomparable Shakspeare for the same fault ".-To conclude on 10 this subject of relations; if we are to be blamed for shewing too much of the action, the French are as faulty for discovering too little of it: a mean betwixt both should be observed by every judicious writer, so as the audience may neither be left unsatisfied by 15 not seeing what is beautiful, or shocked by beholding what is either incredible or undecent.

'I hope I have already proved in this discourse, that though we are not altogether so punctual as the French, in observing the laws of comedy, yet our 20 errours are so few, and little, and those things wherein we excel them so considerable, that we ought of right to be preferred before them. But what will Lisideius say, if they themselves acknowledge they are too strictly bounded' by those laws, 25 for breaking which he has blamed the English? I will alledge Corneille's words, as I find them in the end of his Discourse of the three Unities :-Il est facile aux speculatifs d'estre severes &c. "Tis easy for speculative persons to judge severely; but 30 if they would produce to publick view ten or twelve pieces of this nature, they would perhaps give more 1 ti'd up, A.