5

plays of our age, or regard the good plays' of the last, both the best and worst of the modern poets will equally instruct you to admire the ancients.'

3

2

Crites had no sooner left speaking, but Eugenius, who had waited with some impatience for it, thus began:

'I have observed in your speech, that the former part of it is convincing as to what the moderns have profited by the rules of the ancients; but in the latter 10 you are careful to conceal how much they have excelled them; we own all the helps we have from them, and want neither veneration nor gratitude, while we acknowledge that, to overcome them, we must make use of the advantages we have received from them: 15 but to these assistances we have joined our own industry; for, had we sat down with a dull imitation of them, we might then have lost somewhat of the old perfection, but never acquired any that was new. We draw not therefore after their lines, but those of nature; 20 and having the life before us, besides the experience of all they knew, it is no wonder if we hit, some airs and features which they have missed. I deny not what you urge of arts and sciences, that they have flourished in some ages more than others; but your 25 instance in philosophy makes for me: for if natural causes be more known now than in the time of Aristotle, because more studied, it follows that poesy and other arts may, with the same pains, arrive still nearer to perfection; and, that granted, it will rest 30 for you to prove that they wrought more perfect images of human life than we; which seeing in 3 A om. had.

1 good ones, A.

2

esteem, A.

✓

your discourse you have avoided to make good, it shall now be my task to show you some part of their defects, and some few excellencies of the moderns. And I think there is none among us can imagine I do it enviously, or with purpose to detract from 5 them; for what interest of fame or profit can the living lose by the reputation of the dead? On the other side, it is a great truth which Velleius Paterculus affirms: Audita visis libentius laudamus; et præsentia invidia, præterita admiratione prosequimur ; 10 et his nos obrui, illis instrui credimus: that praise or censure is certainly the most sincere, which unbribed posterity shall give us.

Be pleased then in the first place to take notice, that the Greek poesy, which Crites has affirmed to 15 have arrived to perfection in the reign of the old comedy, was so far from it, that the distinction of it into acts was not known to them; or if it were, it is yet so darkly delivered to us that we cannot make it out.

20

'All we know of it is, from the singing of their Chorus; and that too is so uncertain, that in some of their plays we have reason to conjecture they sung more than five times. Aristotle indeed divides the integral parts of a play into four. First, the Protasis, 25 or entrance, which gives light only to the characters of the persons, and proceeds very little into any part of the action. Secondly, the Epitasis, or working up of the plot; where the play grows warmer, the design or action of it is drawing on, and you see something 30 promising that it will come to pass. Thirdly, the Catastasis, called by the Romans, Status, the height

and full growth of the play: we may call it properly the counter-turn', which destroys that expectation, imbroils the action in new difficulties, and leaves you far distant from that hope in which it found you; as 5 you may have observed in a violent stream resisted by a narrow passage,-it runs round to an eddy, and carries back the waters with more swiftness than it brought them on. Lastly, the Catastrophe, which the Grecians called λúois, the French le dénouement, and 10 we the discovery, or unravelling of the plot: there you see all things settling again upon their first foundations; and, the obstacles which hindered the design or action of the play once removed, it ends with that resemblance of truth and nature, that the audience 15 are satisfied with the conduct of it. Thus this great

man delivered to us the image of a play; and I must confess it is so lively, that from thence much light has been derived to the forming it more perfectly into acts and scenes: but what poet first limited to five the 20 number of the acts, I know not; only we see it so firmly established in the time of Horace, that he gives it for a rule in comedy,-Neu brevior quinto, neu sit productior actu. So that you see the Grecians cannot be said to have consummated this art; writing rather 25 by entrances, than by acts, and having rather a general indigested notion of a play, than knowing how and where to bestow the particular graces of it.

'But since the Spaniards at this day allow but three acts, which they call Jornadas", to a play, and the 30 Italians in many of theirs follow them, when I condemn the ancients, I declare it is not altogether

1 A has, 'Thirdly the Catastasis or Counterturn': the rest om.

because they have not five acts to every play, but because they have not confined themselves to one certain number: it is building an house without a model; and when they succeeded in such undertakings, they ought to have sacrificed to Fortune, not to 5 the Muses.

'Next, for the plot, which Aristotle called tò μvðòs ¤, and often τῶν πραγμάτων σύνθεσις, and from him the Romans Fabula; it has already been judiciously observed by a late writer, that in their tragedies it was 10 only some tale derived from Thebes or Troy, or at least something that happened in those two ages; which was worn so threadbare by the pens of all the epic poets, and even by tradition itself of the talkative Greeklings, (as Ben Johnson calls them,) that before it came upon the stage, it was already known to all the audience: and the people, so soon as ever they heard the name of Oedipus, knew as well as the poet, that he had killed his father by a mistake, and committed incest with his mother, before the play; 20. that they were now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the ghost of Laius: so that they sat with a yawning kind of expectation, till he was to come with his eyes pulled out, and speak a hundred or more1 verses in a tragic tone, in complaint of his 25 misfortunes. But one Oedipus, Hercules, or Medea, had been tolerable: poor people, they escaped not so good cheap"; they had still the chapon bouille set before them, till their appetites were cloyed with the same dish, and, the novelty being gone, the pleasure 30 vanished; so that one main end of Dramatic Poesy

1 hundred or two of, A.

in its definition, which was to cause delight, was of consequence destroyed.

✓ 'In their comedies, the Romans generally borrowed their plots from the Greek poets; and theirs was 5 commonly a little girl stolen or wandered from her parents, brought back unknown to the city1, there [falling into the hands of] some young fellow, who, by the help of his servant, cheats his father; and when her time comes, to cry,-Juno Lucina, fer 10 opem,-one or other sees a little box or cabinet which was carried away with her, and so discovers her to her friends, if some god do not prevent it, by coming down in a machine, and taking the thanks of it to himself.

Carudy chiar's

Types

15

'By the plot you may guess much of the characters of the persons. An old father, who would willingly, before he dies, see his son well married; his debauched son, kind in his nature to his mistress, but miserably in want of money; a servant or slave, who 20 has so much wit to strike in with him, and help to dupe his father; a braggadocio captain, a parasite, and a lady of pleasure.

'As for the poor honest maid, on whom the story is built, and who ought to be one of the principal 25 actors in the play, she is commonly a mute in it: she has the breeding of the old Elizabeth way, which was for maids to be seen and not to be heard; and it is enough you know she is willing to be married, when the fifth act requires it.

30

4

'These are plots built after the Italian mode of

1 the same city, A.

3 so C; Mistres, B; Wench, A.

2 take, A.

4 A om. which was.