Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/33

Rh The neceity of oberving the unities of time and place aries from the uppoed neceity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it impoible, that an action of months or years can be poibly believed to pas in three hours; or that the pectator can uppoe himelf to fit in the theatre, while ambaadors go and return between ditant kings, while armies are levied and towns beieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they aw courting his mitres, hall lament the untimely fall of his on. The mind revolts from evident falehood, and fiction loes its force when it departs from the reemblance of reality.

From the narrow limitation of time necearily aries the contraction of place. The pectator, who knows that he aw the firt act at Alexandria, cannot uppoe that he ees the next at Rome, at a ditance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in o hort a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itelf; that what was a houe cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Perepolis.

Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the miery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without reitance or reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of Shakepeare, that he aumes, as an unquetionable principle, a poition, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his undertanding pronounces to be fale. It is fale, that any repreentation is mitaken Rh