Page:An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.djvu/125

Rh therefore, which a poet is to imitate, must be heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesie; and must be such, as, strictly considered, could never be supposed spoken by any without premeditation.

As for what he urges, that a play will still be supposed to be a composition of several persons speaking ex tempore; and that good verses are the hardest things which can be imagined to be so spoken; I must crave leave to dissent from his opinion, as to the former part of it: for, if I am not deceived, a play is supposed to be the work of the poet, imitating or representing the conversation of several persons; and this I think to be as clear, as he thinks the contrary.

But I will be bolder, and do not doubt to make it good, though a paradox, that one great reason why prose is not to be used in serious plays, is, because it is too near the nature of converse: there may be too great a likeness; as the most skilful painters affirm, that there may be too near a resemblance in a picture: to take every lineament and feature, is not to make an excellent piece; but to take so much only as will make a beautiful resemblance of the whole; and, with an ingenious flattery of nature, to heighten the beauties of some parts, and hide the deformities of the rest. For so says Horace: Ut pictura poesis erit Hæc amat obscurum, vult hæc sub luce videri, Judicis argutum quæ non formidat acumen n. et quæ Desperat tractata nitescere posse, relinquit n. In Bartholomew Fair, or the lowest kind of comedy, that degree of heightning is used, which is proper to