Page:An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.djvu/43

Rh Corneille calls la liaison des scenes, the continuity or joining of the scenes; and 'tis a good mark of a well contrived play, when all the persons are known to each other, and every one of them has some affairs with all the rest.

'As for the third unity, which is that of Action, the ancients meant no other by it than what the logicians do by their finis, the end or scope of any action; that which is the first in intention, and last in execution: now the poet is to aim at one great and complete action, to the carrying on of which all things in play, even the very obstacles, are to be subservient; the reason of this is as evident as any of the former. For two actions, equally laboured and driven on by the writer, would destroy the unity of the poem; it would be no longer one play, but two: not but that there may be many actions in a play, as Ben Johnson has observed in his Discoveries n; but they must be all subservient to the great one, which our language happily expresses in the name of under-plots: such as in Terence's Eunuch is the difference and reconcilement of Thais and Phædria, which is not the chief business of the play, but promotes the marriage of Chærea and Chremes's sister, principally intended by the poet. There ought to be but one action, says Corneille, that is, one complete action, which leaves the mind of the audience in a full repose; but this cannot be brought to pass but by many other imperfect actions, which conduce to it, and hold the audience in a delightful suspence of what will be.

'If by these rules (to omit many other drawn from