The neceffity of obferving the unities of time and place arifes from the supposed 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 fuppose himself to fit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between diftant kings, while armies are levied and towns bèfieged, while an. exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they faw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his fon. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction lofes its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. From the narrow limitation of time neceffarily arifes the contraction of place. The fpectator, who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandria, cannot fuppofe that he fees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in fo short a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a house 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 refistance or reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of Shakefpeare, 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 reprefentation is miftaken [B3] for 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 himfelf 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 persuaded, 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 ecstasy should count the clock, or why an hour fhould not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the ftage a field. The truth is, that the fpectators are always in their fenfes, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage 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 be in fome place; but the different actions that complete a ftory may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the abfurdity of allowing that space to reprefent 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 fo much of the action as is reprefented, the real and poetical duration is the fame. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented 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 fuppofed to intervene. Time is, of all modes of existence, most ob. fequious to the imagination; a lapfe of years is as eafily conceived as a paffage of hours. In contemplation we easily 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 just [B4] picture picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himfelf feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be fuffered 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 ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the poffibility than fuppofe 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 fiction; if we thought murders and treasons 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 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 diminifh 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 gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the foliloquy of Cato? A play 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 space or duration is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pafs 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 enquire. We may reafonably fuppofe, that, when he rofe to notice, he did not want the counfels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at laft deliberately 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 arise evidently from false affumptions, and, by circumfcribing the extent of the drama, leffen its variety, I cannot think it muchto be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not obferved: nor, if fuch another poet could" arife, fhould I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act paffed at Venice, and his next in 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 |