Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/35

 be in ome place; but the different actions that complete a tory may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the aburdity of allowing that pace to repreent firt Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre.

By uppoition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time required by the fable elapes for the mot part between the acts; for, of o much of the action as is repreented, the real and poetical duration is the ame. If, in the firt act, preparations for war againt Mithridates are repreented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without aburdity, be repreented, in the catatrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits ucceive imitations of ucceive actions, and why may not the econd imitation repreent an action that happened years after the firt; if it be o connected with it, that nothing but time can be uppoed to intervene. Time is, of all modes of exitence, mot obsequious to the imagination; a lape of years is as eaily conceived as a paage of hours. In contemplation we eaily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to bo contracted when we only ee their imitation.

It will be aked, 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 jut Rh