had not leisure to be good poets. Beaumont, Fletcher, and Johnson, (who were only capable of bringing us to that degree of perfection which we have,) were just then leaving the world; as if in an age of so much horrour, wit, and those milder studies of humanity, 5 had no farther business among us. But the Muses, who ever follow peace, went to plant in another country it was then, that the great Cardinal of Richelieu began to take them into his protection; and that, by his encouragement, Corneillen, and some 10 other Frenchmen, reformed their theatre, (which before was as much below ours, as it now surpasses it and the rest of Europe). But because Crites in his discourse for the ancients has prevented me, by ob thous serving1 many rules of the stage which the moderns 15 have borrowed from them, I shall only, in short, et demand of you, whether you are not convinced that

of all nations the French have best observed them? In the unity of time you find them so scrupulous, ru that it yet remains a dispute among their poets, 20 au whether the artificial day of twelve hours, more or less, be not meant by Aristotle, rather than the natural one of twenty-four; and consequently, whether all plays ought not to be reduced into that compass. This I can testify, that in all their dramas writ within 25 these last twenty years and upwards, I have not observed any that have extended_the_time_to_thirty hours: in the unity of place they are full as scrupulous; for many of their criticks limit it to that very spot of ground where the play is supposed to begin; 30 none of them exceed the compass of the same town

ants

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 λvous, 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 μVớÒS ¤, 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 bouillé 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.

plot

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.

Caiudy chiar's

15

2

'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

30

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.

'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.

houses, you see through them all at once: the characters are indeed the imitation of nature, but so narrow, as if they had imitated only an eye or an hand, and did not dare to venture on the lines of a face, or the proportion of a body.

5

$déduct acival

'But in how strait a compass soever they have bounded their plots and characters, we will pass it by, if they have regularly pursued them, and perfectly observed those three unities of time, place, and action; the knowledge of which you say is derived 10 to us from them. But in the first place give me leave to tell you, that the unity of place, however it might be practised by them, was never any of their rules: we neither find it in Aristotle, Horace, or any who have written of it, till in our age the French poets 15 first made it a precept of the stage. The unity of time, even Terence himself, who was the best and most regular of them, has neglected: his Heautontimorumenos, or Self-Punisher, takes up visibly two days, says Scaliger; the two first acts concluding 20 the first day, the three last the day ensuing1; and Euripides, in tying himself to one day, has committed an absurdity never to be forgiven him; for in one of his tragedies n he has made Theseus go from Athens to Thebes, which was about forty English 25 miles, under the walls of it to give battle, and appear victorious in the next act; and yet, from the time of his departure to the return of the Nuntius, who gives the relation of his victory, Athra and the

1 A has, therefore, sayes Scaliger, the two first acts concluding the first day were acted overnight; the three last on the ensuing day.'