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 shade, 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 history of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always less. 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 read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident, that the action is not fupposed to be real, and it follows that between the acts a longer or shorter 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 em pire. 1. Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by defign, or deviated from them by happy happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably fuppofe, that, when he role to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted 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, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: Nor, if such another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act paffed at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehenfive genius of Shakespeare, and fuch cenfures are suitable to the minute and flender criticifm of Voltaire : Non usque adeo permifcuit imis Yet when I speak thus flightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before fuch authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present question one of those that are to be decided by mere authority, but because it is to be fufpected, that these precepts have not been so eafily received but but for better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The result of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not effential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes conduce to pleafure, they are always to be facrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of fuperfluous and oftentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what is necessary. He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applaufe with the architect, who shall difplay 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 instruct life. 24 ۱۲ Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberatively written, may recal the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almost fright ed at my own temerity and when I estimate the fame and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to fink down in reverential filence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Tray, when he faw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the besiegers. Thofe Those 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 estimated, must be compared with the state 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 authour, yet as there is always a filent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the enquiry, how far man may extend his designs, or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than inn what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiosity is always busy to discover the inftruments, as well as to survey the workmanship, to know. how much is to be ascribed to original powers, and how much to cafual and adventitious help. The pa laces 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 aftonishment, 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 phi, lology 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; His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He facrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independant on time or place, The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very flight confideration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy. It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himfelf near the end of his work, and, in view of his reVOL. I. [B] ward, |