No More Learning

[95]
Moreover, the curious reader must be informed, that there is an anagram
in the name of the second personage, LISIDEIUS, which points him
out to be Sir Charles Sedley, or Sidley, for his name was spelled both
ways. [96] CRITES, the advocate for blank verse, is Sir Robert Howard,
our author's friend and brother-in-law; who, in the preface to his
plays, published in 1665, had censured rhiming tragedies as unnatural.
Prior has assured us, that EUGENIUS means the witty Earl of
Dorset, then Lord Buckhurst. [97] A very critical observer may remark an
inaccuracy in introducing his lordship as listening to the sound of a
sea-fight, in which he was himself actually engaged. [98] But Dryden did
not mean to identify his speakers, and those shadowed out under them,
otherwise than in their capacity of critics and authors.

Dryden has, with infinite address, avoided, or overcome, the obstacles
which commonly attend an argumentative discussion, in form of a
dialogue. The author of such disputations, in general, so obviously
favours one of the combatants, that we as soon expect Hector to slay
Achilles, or Turnus to defeat Æneas, as nourish the least hope of
the unfriended champion making any effectual resistance. Besides, in
prepared arguments of this sort, as in prepared jests on the stage,
there is an obvious opening left for those thrusts on which the author
chiefly depends for success; so that, instead of admiring the victor,
we are angry at the bad address of his antagonist. All these obstacles
Dryden has contrived to surmount, by the number of his characters, and
the variety of their dialogue, where not only the argument of Neander's
antagonists is fairly stated, but the topics are so judiciously
varied, that the reader is brought to the point which the author aims
at, without stiffness or constraint, as if in the ordinary flow of
literary conversation. Thus, as we never see the purpose which Dryden
wishes to attain, we arrive at his conclusion without fatigue or
prejudice.

The "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" was assailed by several critics. Martin
Clifford, of the Charter-House, accused our author of pilfering from
the French critics, in the second of four very abusive letters. The
only existing edition of these diatribes is one in 1687; but, from
their date and import, this may have been a reprint. Sir Robert Howard
also attacked the Essay, in the preface to his "Duke of Lerma," which
led Dryden to assert his preference of rhyming tragedies, in the
Defence prefixed to the "Indian Emperor. " See Vol. III. p. 263.

This Essay was first published in 1668, or perhaps in the December
preceding. Sixteen years afterwards, Dryden bestowed on it a thorough
revisal; and having, in many places, altered and amended the expression
with unusual care, he published a second edition in 1684, with the
following dedication to Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 94: See the remarks on Dryden's dramatic criticism, subjoined
to his Life, Vol. I]

[Footnote 95: In an elegy on his death, and in a poem addressed
to Captain Gibbon. --_Malone_, Vol. I. p. 63. For aught I know, an
imperfect anagram may be intended; for the letters in the name of
Dryden, with a very little aid, will make out the word _Neander_. ]

[Footnote 96: For Dryden's connection with this gay writer, see
the dedication of the "Assignation," Vol. IV. p. 348. Lisideius is
Sidleius, a little changed. ]

[Footnote 97: "The most eminent masters in their several ways appealed
to his determination. Waller thought it an honour to consult him in the
softness and harmony of his verse, and Dr Sprat in the delicacy and
turn of his prose. Dryden determines by him, under the character of
Eugenius, as to the laws of dramatic poetry. " This occurs in Prior's
dedication of his poems to Lionel, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, in
which he gives his father's character at length, 8vo Edit. 1709. ]

[Footnote 98: The evening before the battle, he is said to have
composed the lively song, beginning,

To all you ladies now at land.

Prior gives the following account of the matter. "In the first Dutch
war, he went a volunteer with the Duke of York: his behaviour during
that campaign was such, as distinguished the Sackvill, descended from
that Hildebrand of the name, who was one of the greatest captains that
came into England with the Conqueror. But his making a song the night
before the engagement, and it is one of the prettiest that ever was
made, carries with it so sedate a presence of mind, and such an unusual
gallantry, that it deserves as much to be recorded as Alexander's
jesting with his soldiers before he past the Granicus, or William the
First of Orange giving order over night for a battle, and desiring to
be called in the morning, lest he should happen to sleep too long. "]




TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE</sc>

CHARLES,

EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX,

LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF THEIR MAJESTIES' HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST
NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &c.


MY LORD,

As I was lately reviewing my loose papers, amongst the rest I found
this Essay; the writing of which, in this rude and indigested manner,
wherein your lordship now sees it, served as an amusement to me in
the country, when the violence of the last plague had driven me from
the town. [99] Seeing, then, our theatres shut up, I was engaged in
these kind of thoughts with the same delight, with which men think
upon their absent mistresses. I confess I find many things in this
discourse, which I do not now approve; my judgment being not a little
altered since the writing of it, but whether for the better, or the
worse, I know not: neither, indeed, is it much material in an Essay,
where all I have said is problematical. For the way of writing plays
in verse, which I have seemed to favour, I have, since that time, laid
the practice of it aside, till I have more leisure, because I find
it troublesome and slow: But I am no way altered from my opinion of
it, at least with any reasons which have opposed it. [100] For your
lordship may easily observe, that none are very violent against it,
but those who either have not attempted it, or who have succeeded ill
in their attempt. It is enough for me to have your lordship's example
for my excuse in that little which I have done in it; and I am sure my
adversaries can bring no such arguments against verse, as those with
which the fourth act of "Pompey" will furnish me in its defence. [101]
Yet, my lord, you must suffer me a little to complain of you, that
you too soon withdraw from us a contentment, of which we expected the
continuance, because you gave it us so early. It is a revolt, without
occasion, from your party, where your merits had already raised you to
the highest commands, and where you have not the excuse of other men,
that you have been ill used, and therefore laid down arms. I know no
other quarrel you can have to verse, than that which Spurina had to
his beauty, when he tore and mangled the features of his face, only
because they pleased too well the sight. [102] It was an honour which
seemed to wait for you, to lead out a new colony of writers from the
mother-nation: and, upon the first spreading of your ensigns, there had
been many in a readiness to have followed so fortunate a leader; if not
all, yet the better part of poets:

_Pars, indocili melior grege; mollis et exspes
Inominata perprimat cubilia_.

I am almost of opinion, that we should force you to accept of the
command, as sometimes the prætorian bands have compelled their captains
to receive the empire. The court, which is the best and surest judge
of writing, has generally allowed of verse; and, in the town, it has
found favourers of wit and quality. As for your own particular, my
lord, you have yet youth and time enough to give part of them to the
divertisement of the public, before you enter into the serious and more
unpleasant business of the world. That which the French poet said of
the temple of Love, may be as well applied to the temple of the Muses.
The words, as near as I can remember them, were these:

_Le jeune homme à mauvaise grace,
N'ayant pas adoré dans le Temple d'Amour;
Il faut qu'il entre; et pour le sage
Si ce n'est pas son vrai sejour,
C'est un gîte sur son passage_.

I leave the words to work their effect upon your lordship in their own
language, because no other can so well express the nobleness of the
thought; and wish you may be soon called to bear a part in the affairs
of the nation, where I know the world expects you, and wonders why you
have been so long forgotten; there being no person amongst our young
nobility, on whom the eyes of all men are so much bent. But, in the
mean time, your lordship may imitate the course of nature, who gives us
the flower before the fruit; that I may speak to you in the language of
the Muses, which I have taken from an excellent poem to the king:

As Nature, when she fruit designs, thinks fit
By beauteous blossoms to proceed to it;
And while she does accomplish all the spring,
Birds to her secret operations sing. [103]

I confess, I have no greater reason, in addressing this Essay to your
lordship, than that it might awaken in you the desire of writing
something, in whatever kind it be, which might be an honour to our
age and country. And methinks it might have the same effect on you,
which Homer tells us the fight of the Greeks and Trojans before the
fleet, had on the spirit of Achilles; who, though he had resolved not
to engage, yet found a martial warmth to steal upon him at the sight
of blows, the sound of trumpets, and the cries of fighting men. For my
own part, if, in treating of this subject, I sometimes dissent from the
opinion of better wits, I declare it is not so much to combat their
opinions, as to defend my own, which were first made public. [104]
Sometimes, like a scholar in a fencing-school, I put forth myself, and
show my own ill play, on purpose to be better taught. Sometimes I stand
desperately to my arms, like the foot when deserted by their horse,
not in hope to overcome, but only to yield on more honourable terms.
And yet, my lord, this war of opinions, you well know, has fallen out
among the writers of all ages, and sometimes betwixt friends. Only it
has been prosecuted by some, like pedants, with violence of words; and
managed by others like gentlemen, with candour and civility. Even Tully
had a controversy with his dear Atticus; and in one of his dialogues
makes him sustain the part of an enemy in philosophy, who, in his
letters, is his confident of state, and made privy to the most weighty
affairs of the Roman senate. And the same respect which was paid by
Tully to Atticus, we find returned to him afterwards by Cæsar, on a
like occasion, who, answering his book in praise of Cato, made it not
so much his business to condemn Cato, as to praise Cicero.

But that I may decline some part of the encounter with my adversaries,
whom I am neither willing to combat, nor well able to resist; I will
give your lordship the relation of a dispute betwixt some of our wits
on the same subject, in which they did not only speak of plays in
verse, but mingled, in the freedom of discourse, some things of the
ancient, many of the modern, ways of writing; comparing those with
these, and the wits of our nation with those of others: it is true they
differed in their opinions, as it is probable they would: neither do
I take upon me to reconcile, but to relate them; and that, as Tacitus
professes of himself, _Sine studio partium, aut irâ_, without passion,
or interest; leaving your lordship to decide it in favour of which part
you shall judge most reasonable, and withal, to pardon the many errors
of

Your lordship's
Most obedient humble servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 99: The great pestilence in 1663. ]

[Footnote 100: As early as 1676, Dryden confesses that he had grown
weary of "his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. " See the prologue to
"Aureng-Zebe," the last rhyming tragedy which he ever wrote. See
Vol. V. p. 188. But although Dryden sometimes chose to abandon his
own opinions, there is no instance of his owning conversion by the
arguments of his adversaries. ]

[Footnote 101: The tragedy of "Pompey the Great," 4to, 1664, translated
out of French by certain persons of honour. Waller wrote the first act;
Lord Buckhurst, it would seem, translated the fourth. ]

[Footnote 102: Valerius Maximus, Lib. IV. Cap. 5. ]

[Footnote 103: "Poem to the King's most sacred Majesty. "--_D'Avenant's
Works_, folio, 1673, p. 268. ]

[Footnote 104: See the dedication to the "Rival Ladies," which is
elaborately written in the cause of Rhyme against Blank Verse. Vol. II.
p. 113. ]




TO THE READER.


The drift of the ensuing discourse was chiefly to vindicate the honour
of our English writers, from the censure of those who unjustly prefer
the French before them. This I intimate, lest any should think me
so exceeding vain, as to teach others an art which they understand
much better than myself. But if this incorrect Essay, written in the
country without the help of books, or advice of friends, shall find any
acceptance in the world, I promise to myself a better success of the
Second Part, wherein I shall more fully treat of the virtues and faults
of the English poets, who have written either in this, the epic, or the
lyric way. [105]

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 105: This promise our author never fully performed; although
the "Essay on Epic Poetry," and other parts of his critical works,
exhibit the materials of the proposed Second Part. ]




AN

ESSAY

OF

DRAMATIC POESY.


It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war, when
our navy engaged the Dutch;[106] a day wherein the two most mighty and
best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the command
of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations, and the
riches of the universe: while these vast floating bodies, on either
side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our countrymen,
under the happy conduct of his Royal Highness,[107] went breaking, by
little and little, into the line of the enemies; the noise of the
cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city; so that all
men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of the event,
which they knew was then deciding, every one went following the sound
as his fancy led him; and leaving the town almost empty, some took
towards the Park, some cross the river, others down it; all seeking the
noise in the depth of silence.

Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius,
and Neander, to be in company together: three of them persons whom
their wit and quality have made known to all the town; and whom I have
chose to hide under these borrowed names, that they may not suffer by
so ill a relation as I am going to make of their discourse.

Taking then a barge, which a servant of Lisideius had provided for
them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them that
great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what they
desired: after which, having disengaged themselves from many vessels
which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up the passage
towards Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars
more gently; and then every one favouring his own curiosity with a
strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived the air to break
about them like the noise of distant thunder, or of swallows in a
chimney: those little undulations of sound, though almost vanishing
before they reached them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of
their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets. After they had
attentively listened till such time as the sound by little and little
went from them,[108] Eugenius, lifting up his head, and taking notice
of it, was the first who congratulated to the rest that happy omen
of our nation's victory: adding, that we had but this to desire in
confirmation of it, that we might hear no more of that noise which
was now leaving the English coast. When the rest had concurred in the
same opinion, Crites, a person of a sharp judgement, and somewhat too
delicate a taste in wit, which the world hath mistaken in him for ill
nature,[109] said, smiling to us, that if the concernment of this
battle had not been so exceeding great, he could scarce have wished
the victory at the price he knew he must pay for it, in being subject
to the reading and hearing of so many ill verses as he was sure would
be made on that subject. Adding, that no argument could 'scape some
of those eternal rhymers, who watch a battle with more diligence than
the ravens and birds of prey; and the worst of them surest to be first
in upon the quarry; while the better able, either out of modesty writ
not at all, or set that due value upon their poems, as to let them be
often desired, and long expected. There are some of those impertinent
people of whom you speak, answered Lisideius, who, to my knowledge,
are already so provided, either way, that they can produce not only a
panegyric upon the victory, but, if need be, a funeral elegy on the
duke; wherein, after they have crowned his valour with many laurels,
they will at last deplore the odds under which he fell, concluding,
that his courage deserved a better destiny. All the company smiled at
the conceit of Lisideius; but Crites, more eager than before, began
to make particular exceptions against some writers, and said, the
public magistrate ought to send betimes to forbid them; and that it
concerned the peace and quiet of all honest people, that ill poets
should be as well silenced as seditious preachers. In my opinion,
replied Eugenius, you pursue your point too far; for as to my own
particular, I am so great a lover of poesy, that I could wish them all
rewarded, who attempt but to do well; at least, I would not have them
worse used than one of their brethren was by Sylla the dictator: _Quem
in concione vidimus_, (says Tully,) _cum ei libellum malus poeta de
populo subjecisset, quod epigramma in eum fecisset tantummodo alternis
versibus longiusculis, statim ex iis rebus quas tunc vendebat jubere ei
præmium tribui, sub ea conditione ne quid postea scriberet_. I could
wish with all my heart, replied Crites, that many whom we know were
as bountifully thanked upon the same condition, that they would never
trouble us again. For amongst others, I have a mortal apprehension
of two poets, whom this victory, with the help of both her wings,
will never be able to escape. 'Tis easy to guess whom you intend,
said Lisideius; and without naming them, I ask you if one of them
does not perpetually pay us with clenches upon words, and a certain
clownish kind of raillery? [110] If now and then he does not offer a
_catachresis_ or _Cleivelandism_,[111] wresting and torturing a word
into another meaning: in fine, if he be not one of those whom the
French would call _un mauvais buffon_; one who is so much a well-willer
to the satire, that he intends at least to spare no man; and though he
cannot strike a blow to hurt any, yet he ought to be punished for the
malice of the action; as our witches are justly hanged, because they
think themselves to be such; and suffer deservedly for believing they
did mischief, because they meant it. [112] You have described him, said
Crites, so exactly, that I am afraid to come after you with my other
extremity of poetry: he is one of those, who, having had some advantage
of education and converse, knows better than the other what a poet
should be, but puts it into practice more unluckily than any man. His
style and matter are every where alike; he is the most calm, peaceable
writer you ever read: he never disquiets your passions with the least
concernment, but still leaves you in as even a temper as he found you;
he is a very leveller in poetry: he creeps along with ten little words
in every line, and helps out his numbers with _For to_, and _Unto_,
and all the pretty expletives he can find, till he drags them to the
end of another line; while the sense is left tired half way behind it:
he doubly starves all his verses, first, for want of thought, and then
of expression. His poetry neither has wit in it, nor seems to have it;
like him in Martial:

_Pauper videri_ Cinna _vult, et est pauper_.

He affects plainness, to cover his want of imagination: when he writes
the serious way, the highest flight of his fancy is some miserable
antithesis or seeming contradiction; and in the comic, he is still
reaching at some thin conceit, the ghost of a jest, and that too flies
before him, never to be caught. These swallows which we see before us
on the Thames, are the just resemblance of his wit: you may observe how
near the water they stoop, how many proffers they make to dip, and yet
how seldom they touch it; and when they do, 'tis but the surface: they
skim over it but to catch a gnat, and then mount into the air and leave
it. --Well, gentlemen, said Eugenius, you may speak your pleasure of
these authors; but though I and some few more about the town may give
you a peaceable hearing, yet assure yourselves, there are multitudes
who would think you malicious, and them injured; especially him whom
you first described. He is the very Withers of the city:[113] they
have bought more editions of his works than would serve to lay under
all their pies at the Lord Mayor's Christmas. When his famous poem
first came out in the year 1660,[114] I have seen them reading it in
the midst of Change-time; nay, so vehement they were at it, that they
lost their bargain by the candles' ends. [115] But what will you say if
he has been received amongst great persons? I can assure you he is,
this day, the envy of one, who is lord in the art of quibbling; and
who does not take it well, that any man should intrude so far into his
province. All I would wish, replied Crites, is, that they who love
his writings, may still admire him, and his fellow poet: _Qui Bavium
non odit_, &c. is curse sufficient. And farther, added Lisideius, I
believe there is no man who writes well, but would think he had hard
measure, if their admirers should praise any thing of his: _Nam quos
contemnimus, eorum quoque laudes contemnimus_. There are so few who
write well in this age, said Crites, that methinks any praises should
be welcome; they neither rise to the dignity of the last age, nor to
any of the ancients: and we may cry out of the writers of this time,
with more reason than Petronius of his, _Pace vestrâ liceat dixisse,
primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis_: you have debauched the true old
poetry so far, that nature, which is the soul of it, is not in any of
your writings.

If your quarrel (said Eugenius) to those who now write, be grounded
only on your reverence to antiquity, there is no man more ready to
adore those great Greeks and Romans than I am: but, on the other side,
I cannot think so contemptibly of the age in which I live, or so
dishonourably of my own country, as not to judge we equal the ancients
in most kinds of poesy, and in some surpass them; neither know I any
reason why I may not be as zealous for the reputation of our age, as
we find the ancients themselves were in reverence to those who lived
before them. For you hear your Horace saying,

_Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crassé
Compositum, illepidève putetur, sed quia nuper_.

And after:

_Si meliora dies, ut vina, poemata reddit,
Scire velim, pretium chartis quotus arroget annus? _

But I see I am engaging in a wide dispute, where the arguments are
not like to reach close on either side; for poesy is of so large an
extent, and so many, both of the ancients and moderns, have done well
in all kinds of it, that in citing one against the other, we shall take
up more time this evening, than each man's occasions will allow him:
therefore I would ask Crites to what part of poesy he would confine
his arguments, and whether he would defend the general cause of the
ancients against the moderns, or oppose any age of the moderns against
this of ours.

Crites, a little while considering upon this demand, told Eugenius,
that if he pleased he would limit their dispute to Dramatic Poesy; in
which he thought it not difficult to prove, either that the ancients
were superior to the moderns, or the last age to this of ours. [116]

Eugenius was somewhat surprised, when he heard Crites make choice of
that subject. For aught I see, said he, I have undertaken a harder
province than I imagined; for, though I never judged the plays of the
Greek or Roman poets comparable to ours, yet, on the other side, those
we now see acted come short of many which were written in the last
age. But my comfort is, if we are overcome, it will be only by our own
countrymen: and if we yield to them in this one part of poesy, we more
surpass them in all the other; for in the epic or lyric way, it will
be hard for them to shew us one such amongst them, as we have many now
living, or who lately were. They can produce nothing so courtly writ,
or which expresses so much the conversation of a gentleman, as Sir John
Suckling; nothing so even, sweet, and flowing, as Mr Waller; nothing
so majestic, so correct, as Sir John Denham; nothing so elevated, so
copious, and full of spirit, as Mr Cowley. As for the Italian, French,
and Spanish plays, I can make it evident, that those who now write,
surpass them; and that the drama is wholly ours.

All of them were thus far of Eugenius his opinion, that the sweetness
of English verse was never understood or practised by our fathers; even
Crites himself did not much oppose it: and every one was willing to
acknowledge how much our poesy is improved, by the happiness of some
writers yet living; who first taught us to mould our thoughts into easy
and significant words, to retrench the superfluities of expression, and
to make our rhyme so properly a part of the verse, that it should never
mislead the sense, but itself be led and governed by it.

Eugenius was going to continue this discourse, when Lisideius told
him, that it was necessary, before they proceeded further, to take a
standing measure of their controversy; for how was it possible to be
decided, who wrote the best plays, before we know what a play should
be? but, this once agreed on by both parties, each might have recourse
to it, either to prove his own advantages, or to discover the failings
of his adversary.

He had no sooner said this, but all desired the favour of him to give
the definition of a play; and they were the more importunate, because
neither Aristotle, nor Horace, nor any other, who had writ of that
subject, had ever done it.

Lisideius, after some modest denials, at last confessed he had a rude
notion of it; indeed rather a description than a definition; but which
served to guide him in his private thoughts, when he was to make a
judgment of what others writ: that he conceived a play ought to be, "A
just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and
humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the
delight and instruction of mankind. "

This definition (though Crites raised a logical objection against
it--that it was only _à genere et fine_, and so not altogether perfect)
was yet well received by the rest: and after they had given order to
the watermen to turn their barge, and row softly, that they might take
the cool of the evening in their return, Crites, being desired by the
company to begin, spoke on behalf of the ancients, in this manner:--

If confidence presage a victory, Eugenius, in his own opinion, has
already triumphed over the ancients: nothing seems more easy to him,
than to overcome those whom it is our greatest praise to have imitated
well; for we do not only build upon their foundations, but by their
models. Dramatic Poesy had time enough, reckoning from Thespis (who
first invented it) to Aristophanes, to be born, to grow up, and to
flourish in maturity. It has been observed of arts and sciences, that
in one and the same century they have arrived to great perfection;
and no wonder, since every age has a kind of universal genius, which
inclines those that live in it to some particular studies: the work
then being pushed on by many hands, must of necessity go forward.

Is it not evident, in these last hundred years, (when the study of
philosophy has been the business of all the Virtuosi in Christendom,)
that almost a new nature has been revealed to us? that more errors of
the school have been detected, more useful experiments in philosophy
have been made, more noble secrets in optics, medicine, anatomy,
astronomy, discovered, than in all those credulous and doting ages from
Aristotle to us? --so true it is, that nothing spreads more fast than
science, when rightly and generally cultivated.

Add to this, the more than common emulation that was in those times,
of writing well; which though it be found in all ages, and all
persons that pretend to the same reputation, yet poesy being then
in more esteem than now it is, had greater honours decreed to the
professors of it, and consequently the rivalship was more high between
them. They had judges ordained to decide their merit, and prizes to
reward it; and historians have been diligent to record of Æschylus,
Euripides, Sophocles, Lycophron, and the rest of them, both who they
were that vanquished in these wars of the theatre, and how often
they were crowned: while the Asian kings and Grecian commonwealths
scarce afforded them a nobler subject, than the unmanly luxuries of a
debauched court, or giddy intrigues of a factious city:--_Alit æmulatio
ingenia, (says Paterculus) et nunc invidia, nunc admiratio incitationem
accendit_: Emulation is the spur of wit; and sometimes envy, sometimes
admiration, quickens our endeavours.

But now since the rewards of honour are taken away, that virtuous
emulation is turned into direct malice; yet so slothful, that it
contents itself to condemn and cry down others, without attempting to
do better: 'tis a reputation too unprofitable, to take the necessary
pains for it; yet wishing they had it, that desire is incitement
enough to hinder others from it. And this, in short, Eugenius, is
the reason, why you have now so few good poets, and so many severe
judges. Certainly, to imitate the ancients well, much labour and long
study is required; which pains, I have already shewn, our poets would
want encouragement to take, if yet they had ability to go through the
work. Those ancients have been faithful imitators, and wise observers
of that nature which is so torn and ill represented in our plays;
they have handed down to us a perfect resemblance of her; which we,
like ill copiers, neglecting to look on, have rendered monstrous, and
disfigured. But, that you may know how much you are indebted to those
your masters, and be ashamed to have so ill requited them, I must
remember you, that all the rules by which we practise the drama at this
day, (either such as relate to the justness and symmetry of the plot;
or the episodical ornaments, such as descriptions, narrations, and
other beauties, which are not essential to the play;) were delivered
to us from the observations which Aristotle made, of those poets, who
either lived before him, or were his contemporaries. We have added
nothing of our own, except we have the confidence to say, our wit
is better; of which none boast in this our age, but such as
understand not theirs. Of that book which Aristotle has left us,
_ωερὶ τῆς Ποιητικῆς_, Horace his "Art of Poetry," is
an excellent comment, and, I believe, restores to us that Second Book
of his concerning comedy, which is wanting in him.

Out of these two have been extracted the famous rules which the French
call _Des Trois Unites_, or the Three Unities, which ought to be
observed in every regular play; namely, of time, place, and action.

The unity of time they comprehend in twenty-four hours, the compass of
a natural day, or as near as it can be contrived; and the reason of it
is obvious to every one,--that the time of the feigned action, or fable
of the play, should be proportioned as near as can be to the duration
of that time in which it is represented: since therefore all plays are
acted on the theatre in a space of time much within the compass of
twenty-four hours, that play is to be thought the nearest imitation
of nature, whose plot or action is confined within that time. And,
by the same rule which concludes this general proportion of time, it
follows, that all the parts of it are (as near as may be) to be equally
subdivided; namely, that one act take not up the supposed time of half
a day, which is out of proportion to the rest; since the other four are
then to be straitened within the compass of the remaining half: for
it is unnatural, that one act, which being spoke or written, is not
longer than the rest, should be supposed longer by the audience; it is
therefore the poet's duty, to take care, that no act should be imagined
to exceed the time in which it is represented on the stage; and that
the intervals and inequalities of time be supposed to fall out between
the acts.

This rule of time, how well it has been observed by the ancients, most
of their plays will witness. You see them in their tragedies, (wherein
to follow this rule is certainly most difficult,) from the very
beginning of their plays, falling close into that part of the story
which they intend for the action, or principal object of it, leaving
the former part to be delivered by narration: so that they set the
audience, as it were, at the post where the race is to be concluded;
and saving them the tedious expectation of seeing the poet set out and
ride the beginning of the course, they suffer you not to behold him,
till he is in sight of the goal, and just upon you.

For the second unity, which is that of place, the ancients meant by
it, that the scene ought to be continued through the play, in the same
place where it was laid in the beginning: for the stage, on which it
is represented, being but one and the same place, it is unnatural to
conceive it many; and those far distant from one another. I will not
deny, but by the variation of painted scenes, the fancy (which in
these cases will contribute to its own deceit) may sometimes imagine
it several places, with some appearance of probability; yet it still
carries the greater likelihood of truth, if those places be supposed
so near each other, as in the same town or city, which may all be
comprehended under the larger denomination of one place: for a greater
distance will bear no proportion to the shortness of time which is
allotted, in the acting, to pass from one of them to another. For the
observation of this, next to the ancients, the French are to be most
commended. They tie themselves so strictly to the unity of place, that
you never see in any of their plays, a scene changed in the middle of
an act: if the act begins in a garden, a street, or chamber, 'tis ended
in the same place; and that you may know it to be the same, the stage
is so supplied with persons, that it is never empty all the time: he
who enters second, has business with him who was on before; and before
the second quits the stage, a third appears who has business with
him. This 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 his play, even the very
obstacles, are to be subservient; and 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 Jonson has
observed in his "Discoveries;"[117] 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 suspense of what will be.

If by these rules (to omit many other drawn from the precepts and
practice of the ancients) we should judge our modern plays, 'tis
probable, that few of them would endure the trial: that which should
be the business of a day, takes up in some of them an age; instead of
one action, they are the epitomes of a man's life; and for one spot
of ground (which the stage should represent) we are sometimes in more
countries than the map can show us.

But if we allow the ancients to have contrived well, we must
acknowledge them to have written better. Questionless we are deprived
of a great stock of wit in the loss of Menander among the Greek poets,
and of Cæcilius, Afranius, and Varius, among the Romans. We may guess
at Menander's excellency, by the plays of Terence, who translated
some of his; and yet wanted so much of him, that he was called by C.
Cæsar the half-Menander; and may judge of Varius, by the testimonies
of Horace, Martial, and Velleius Paterculus. 'Tis probable that these,
could they be recovered, would decide the controversy; but so long as
Aristophanes and Plautus are extant, while the tragedies of Euripides,
Sophocles, and Seneca, are in our hands, I can never see one of those
plays which are now written, but it increases my admiration of the
ancients. And yet I must acknowledge further, that to admire them as
we ought, we should understand them better than we do. Doubtless many
things appear flat to us, the wit of which depended on some custom or
story, which never came to our knowledge; or perhaps on some criticism
in their language, which being so long dead, and only remaining
in their books, 'tis not possible they should make us understand
perfectly. To read Macrobius, explaining the propriety and elegancy
of many words in Virgil, which I had before passed over without
consideration, as common things, is enough to assure me, that I ought
to think the same of Terence; and that in the purity of his style,
(which Tully so much valued, that he ever carried his works about him,)
there is yet left in him great room for admiration, if I knew but where
to place it. In the mean time, I must desire you to take notice, that
the greatest man of the last age (Ben Jonson) was willing to give place
to them in all things: he was not only a professed imitator of Horace,
but a learned plagiary of all the others; you track him every where in
their snow. If Horace, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Seneca, and Juvenal,
had their own from him, there are few serious thoughts which are new
in him: you will pardon me, therefore, if I presume he loved their
fashion, when he wore their clothes. [118] But since I have otherwise a
great veneration for him, and you, Eugenius, prefer him above all other
poets,[119] I will use no farther argument to you than his example: I
will produce before you father Ben, dressed in all the ornaments and
colours of the ancients; you will need no other guide to our party,
if you follow him; and whether you consider the bad plays of our age,
or regard the good plays of the last, both the best and worst of the
modern poets will equally instruct you to admire the ancients.

Crites had no sooner left speaking, but Eugenius, who had waited with
some impatience for it, thus began:--

I have observed in your speech, that the former part of it is
convincing, as to what the moderns have profited by the rules of
the ancients; but in the latter you are careful to conceal how much
they have excelled them. We own all the helps we have from them, and
want neither veneration nor gratitude, while we acknowledge, that to
overcome them we must make use of the advantages we have received from
them: but to these assistances we have joined our own industry; for,
had we sat down with a dull imitation of them, we might then have
lost somewhat of the old perfection, but never acquired any that was
new. We draw not therefore after their lines, but those of nature; and
having the life before us, besides the experience of all they knew, it
is no wonder if we hit some airs and features which they have missed. I
deny not what you urge of arts and sciences, that they have flourished
in some ages more than others; but your instance in philosophy makes
for me: for if natural causes be more known now than in the time of
Aristotle, because more studied, it follows, that poesy and other arts
may, with the same pains, arrive still nearer to perfection; and, that
granted, it will rest for you to prove, that they wrought more perfect
images of human life, than we; which seeing in your discourse you have
avoided to make good, it shall now be my task to shew you some part of
their defects, and some few excellencies of the moderns. And I think
there is none among us can imagine I do it enviously, or with purpose
to detract from them; for what interest of fame or profit can the
living lose by the reputation of the dead? On the other side, it is a
great truth which Velleius Paterculus affirms: _Audita visis libentius
laudamus; et præsentia invidiâ, præterita admiratione prosequimur;
et his nos obrui, illis instrui credimus_: that praise or censure is
certainly the most sincere, which unbribed posterity shall give us.

Be pleased then, in the first place, to take notice, that the Greek
poesy, which Crites has affirmed to have arrived to perfection in the
reign of the old comedy, was so far from it, that the distinction of
it into acts was not known to them; or if it were, it is yet so darkly
delivered to us, that we cannot make it out.

All we know of it is, from the singing of their chorus; and that
too is so uncertain, that in some of their plays we have reason to
conjecture they sung more than five times. Aristotle indeed divides
the integral parts of a play into four. First, the _Protasis_, or
entrance, which gives light only to the characters of the persons,
and proceeds very little into any part of the action. Secondly, the
_Epitasis_, or working up of the plot; where the play grows warmer, the
design or action of it is drawing on, and you see something promising
that it will come to pass. Thirdly, the _Catastasis_, called by the
Romans, _Status_, the height and full growth of the play: we may call
it properly the counter-turn, which destroys that expectation, embroils
the action in new difficulties, and leaves you far distant from that
hope in which it found you; as you may have observed in a violent
stream, resisted by a narrow passage,--it runs round to an eddy, and
carries back the waters with more swiftness than it brought them on.
Lastly, the _Catastrophe_, which the Grecians called λυσις,
the French _le denouement_, and we the discovery, or unravelling of
the plot: there you see all things settling again upon their first
foundations, and, the obstacles which hindered the design or action
of the play once removed, it ends with that resemblance of truth and
nature, that the audience are satisfied with the conduct of it. Thus
this great man delivered to us the image of a play; and I must confess
it is so lively, that from thence much light has been derived to the
forming it more perfectly into acts and scenes: but what poet first
limited to five the number of the acts, I know not; only we see it
so firmly established in the time of Horace, that he gives it for a
rule in comedy,--_Neu brevior quinto, neu sit productior actu_. So
that you see the Grecians cannot be said to have consummated this art;
writing rather by entrances, than by acts, and having rather a general
indigested notion of a play, than knowing how, and where to bestow the
particular graces of it.

But since the Spaniards at this day allow but three acts, which they
call _Jornadas_, to a play, and the Italians in many of theirs follow
them, when I condemn the ancients, I declare it is not altogether
because they have not five acts to every play, but because they have
not confined themselves to one certain number: it is building an house
without a model; and when they succeeded in such undertakings, they
ought to have sacrificed to Fortune, not to the Muses.

Next, for the plot, which Aristotle called τὸ μυθὸς, and often
των πραγμάτων συ΄νθεσις, and from him the
Romans _Fabula_, it has already been judiciously observed by a late
writer, that in their tragedies it was only some tale derived from
Thebes or Troy, or at least something that happened in those two ages;
which was worn so thread-bare by the pens of all the epic poets, and
even by tradition itself of the talkative Greeklings, (as Ben Jonson
calls them,) that before it came upon the stage, it was already known
to all the audience; and the people, so soon as ever they heard the
name of Œdipus, knew as well as the poet, that he had killed his
father by a mistake, and committed incest with his mother, before the
play; that they were now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the
ghost of Laius: so that they sate with a yawning kind of expectation,
till he was to come with his eyes pulled out, and speak a hundred or
more verses in a tragic tone, in complaint of his misfortunes. But one
Œdipus, Hercules, or Medea, had been tolerable; poor people, they
escaped not so good cheap; they had still the _chapon bouillé_ set
before them, till their appetites were cloyed with the same dish, and,
the novelty being gone, the pleasure vanished; so that one main end of
Dramatic Poesy in its definition, which was to cause delight, was of
consequence destroyed. [120]

In their comedies, the Romans generally borrowed their plots from the
Greek poets; and theirs was commonly a little girl stolen or wandered
from her parents, brought back unknown to the city, there got with
child by some lewd young fellow, who, by the help of his servant,
cheats his father; and when her time comes, to cry--_Juno Lucina, fer
opem_, one or other sees a little box or cabinet which was carried
away with her, and so discovers her to her friends, if some god do not
prevent it, by coming down in a machine, and taking the thanks of it to
himself.

By the plot you may guess much of the characters of the persons.
An old
father, who would willingly, before he dies, see his son well married;
his debauched son, kind in his nature to his mistress, but miserably
in want of money; a servant or slave, who has so much wit to strike
in with him, and help to dupe his father; a braggadocio captain, a
parasite, and a lady of pleasure.

As for the poor honest maid, on whom the story is built, and who ought
to be one of the principal actors in the play, she is commonly a mute
in it: she has the breeding of the old Elizabeth way, which was for
maids to be seen, and not to be heard; and it is enough you know she is
willing to be married, when the fifth act requires it.

These are plots built after the Italian mode of houses,--you see
through them all at once: the characters are indeed the imitations of
nature, but so narrow, as if they had imitated only an eye or an hand,
and did not dare to venture on the lines of a face, or the proportion
of a body.

But in how straight a compass soever they have bounded their plots and
characters, we will pass it by, if they have regularly pursued them,
and perfectly observed those three unities of time, place, and action;
the knowledge of which you say is derived to us from them. But, in
the first place, give me leave to tell you, that the unity of place,
however it might be practised by them, was never any of their rules:
we neither find it in Aristotle, Horace, or any who have written of
it, till in our age the French poets first made it a precept of the
stage. The unity of time, even Terence himself, who was the best and
most regular of them, has neglected: his "_Heautontimorumenos_," or
Self-punisher, takes up visibly two days, says Scaliger; the two first
acts concluding the first day, the three last the day ensuing; and
Euripides, in tying himself to one day, has committed an absurdity
never to be forgiven him; for in one of his tragedies he has made
Theseus go from Athens to Thebes, which was about forty English miles,
under the walls of it to give battle, and appear victorious in the
next act; and yet, from the time of his departure to the return of the
Nuntius, who gives the relation of his victory, Æthra and the Chorus
have but thirty-six verses; which is not for every mile a verse.

The like error is as evident in Terence his "Eunuch," when Laches, the
old man, enters by mistake into the house of Thais; where, betwixt his
exit, and the entrance of Pythias, who comes to give ample relation
of the disorders he has raised within, Parmeno, who was left upon the
stage, has not above five lines to speak. _C'est bien employer un temps
si court_, says the French poet, who furnished me with one of the
observations: and almost all their tragedies will afford us examples of
the like nature.

It is true, they have kept the continuity, or, as you called it,
_liaison des Scenes_, somewhat better: two do not perpetually come in
together, talk, and go out together; and other two succeed them, and
do the same throughout the act, which the English call by the name
of single scenes; but the reason is, because they have seldom above
two or three scenes, properly so called, in every act; for it is to
be accounted a new scene, not only every time the stage is empty, but
every person who enters, though to others, makes it so; because he
introduces a new business. Now the plots of their plays being narrow,
and the persons few, one of their acts was written in a less compass
than one of our well-wrought scenes; and yet they are often deficient
even in this. To go no farther than Terence, you find in the "Eunuch,"
Antipho entering single in the midst of the third act, after Chremes
and Pythias were gone off: in the same play you have likewise Dorias
beginning the fourth act alone; and after she has made a relation of
what was done at the Soldier's entertainment, (which by the way was
very inartificial, because she was presumed to speak directly to the
audience, and to acquaint them with what was necessary to be known, but
yet should have been so contrived by the poet, as to have been told
by persons of the drama to one another, and so by them to have come to
the knowledge of the people,) she quits the stage, and Phædria enters
next, alone likewise: he also gives you an account of himself, and of
his returning from the country, in monologue; to which unnatural way
of narration Terence is subject in all his plays. In his "Adelphi, or
Brothers," Syrus and Demea enter after the scene was broken by the
departure of Sostrata, Geta, and Canthara; and indeed you can scarce
look into any of his comedies, where you will not presently discover
the same interruption.

But as they have failed both in laying of their plots, and in
the management, swerving from the rules of their own art, by
misrepresenting nature to us, in which they have ill satisfied one
intention of a play, which was delight; so in the instructive part they
have erred worse: instead of punishing vice, and rewarding virtue,
they have often shewn a prosperous wickedness, and an unhappy piety:
they have set before us a bloody image of revenge in Medea, and given
her dragons to convey her safe from punishment. A Priam and Astyanax
murdered, and Cassandra ravished, and the lust and murder ending in the
victory of him who acted them. In short, there is no indecorum in any
of our modern plays, which, if I would excuse, I could not shadow with
some authority from the ancients.

And one farther note of them let me leave you: tragedies and comedies
were not writ then as they are now, promiscuously, by the same person;
but he who found his genius bending to the one, never attempted the
other way. This is so plain, that I need not instance to you, that
Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, never any of them writ a tragedy;
Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca, never meddled with comedy:
the sock and buskin were not worn by the same poet. Having then so
much care to excel in one kind, very little is to be pardoned them,
if they miscarried in it; and this would lead me to the consideration
of their wit, had not Crites given me sufficient warning not to be
too bold in my judgment of it; because, the languages being dead, and
many of the customs and little accidents on which it depended, lost to
us, we are not competent judges of it. But though I grant, that here
and there we may miss the application of a proverb or a custom, yet a
thing well said will be wit in all languages; and though it may lose
something in the translation, yet to him who reads it in the original,
'tis still the same; he has an idea of its excellency, though it cannot
pass from his mind into any other expression or words than those in
which he finds it. When Phædria in the "Eunuch" had a command from his
mistress to be absent two days, and encouraging himself to go through
with it, said, _Tandem ego non illâ caream, si sit opus, vel totum
triduum? _ Parmeno, to mock the softness of his master, lifting up his
hands and eyes, cries out, as it were in admiration, _Hui! universum
triduum! _ the elegancy of which _universum_, though it cannot be
rendered in our language, yet leaves an impression on our souls. But
this happens seldom in him; in Plautus oftener, who is infinitely too
bold in his metaphors and coining words, out of which many times his
wit is nothing; which questionless was one reason why Horace falls upon
him so severely in those verses:

_Sed proavi nostri Plautinos et numeros, et
Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stolide_. [121]



For Horace himself was cautious to obtrude a new word on his readers,
and makes custom and common use the best measure of receiving it into
writings:

_Multa renascentur quæ nunc [jam] cecidere, cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi_.

The not observing this rule is that which the world has blamed in our
satyrist, Cleiveland; to express a thing hard and unnaturally, is his
new way of elocution. It is true, no poet but may sometimes use a
catachresis; Virgil does it,--

_Mistaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho_,--

in his eclogue of Pollio; and in his seventh[122] Æneid,

----_mirantur et undæ,
Miratur nemus, insuetum fulgentia longe
Scuta virum fluvio, pictasque innare carinas_.

And Ovid once so modestly, that he asks leave to do it:

----_[quem] si verbo audacia detur,
Haud metuam summi dixisse Palatia cœli_.

calling the court of Jupiter by the name of Augustus his palace; though
in another place he is more bold, where he says, _Et longas visent
Capitolia pompas_. [123] But to do this always, and never be able to
write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants,
will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in
the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought
comes dressed in words so commonly received, that it is understood
by the meanest apprehensions, as the best meat is the most easily
digested. But we cannot read a verse of Cleiveland's without making a
face at it, as if every word were a pill to swallow: He gives us many
times a hard nut to break our teeth, without a kernel for our pains. So
that there is this difference betwixt his satires and Doctor Donne's,
that the one gives us deep thoughts in common language, though rough
cadence; the other gives us common thoughts in abstruse words. It is
true, in some places his wit is independent of his words, as in that of
the rebel Scot:

Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;
Not forced him wander, but confined him home. [124]

_Si sic omnia dixisset! _ This is wit in all languages: it is like
mercury, never to be lost or killed:--and so that other,

For beauty, like white-powder, makes no noise,
And yet the silent hypocrite destroys.

You see the last line is highly metaphorical, but it is so soft and
gentle, that it does not shock us as we read it.

But, to return from whence I have digressed, to the consideration of
the ancients' writing, and their wit; of which, by this time, you
will grant us in some measure to be fit judges. Though I see many
excellent thoughts in Seneca, yet he, of them who had a genius most
proper for the stage, was Ovid; he had a way of writing so fit to stir
up a pleasing admiration and concernment, which are the objects of a
tragedy, and to shew the various movements of a soul combating betwixt
two different passions, that had he lived in our age, or in his own
could have writ with our advantages, no man but must have yielded to
him; and therefore I am confident the "Medea" is none of his; for
though I esteem it for the gravity and sententiousness of it, which he
himself concludes to be suitable to a tragedy,--_Omne genus scripti
gravitate Tragœdia vincit_,--yet it moves not my soul enough to
judge that he, who in the epic way wrote things so near the drama, as
the story of Myrrha, of Caunus and Biblis, and the rest, should stir up
no more concernment where he most endeavoured it. [125] The master-piece
of Seneca I hold to be that scene in the "Troades," where Ulysses is
seeking for Astyanax to kill him: there you see the tenderness of a
mother, so represented in Andromache, that it raises compassion to a
high degree in the reader, and bears the nearest resemblance of any
thing in the tragedies of the ancients, to the excellent scenes of
passion in Shakespeare, or in Fletcher. --For love-scenes you will
find few among them; their tragic poets dealt not with that soft
passion, but with lust, cruelty, revenge, ambition, and those bloody
actions they produced; which were more capable of raising horror than
compassion in an audience: leaving love untouched, whose gentleness
would have tempered them, which is the most frequent of all the
passions, and which, being the private concernment of every person, is
soothed by viewing its own image in a public entertainment.

Among their comedies, we find a scene or two of tenderness, and that
where you would least expect it, in Plautus; but to speak generally,
their lovers say little, when they see each other, but _anima mea, vita
mea_; ζωὴ και ψυχῆ, as the women in Juvenal's time used to
cry out in the fury of their kindness. Any sudden gust of passion (as
an ecstasy of love in an unexpected meeting) cannot better be expressed
than in a word, and a sigh, breaking one another. Nature is dumb on
such occasions; and to make her speak, would be to represent her unlike
herself. But there are a thousand other concernments of lovers, as
jealousies, complaints, contrivances, and the like, where not to open
their minds at large to each other, were to be wanting to their own
love, and to the expectation of the audience; who watch the movements
of their minds, as much as the changes of their fortunes. For the
imagining of the first is properly the work of a poet; the latter he
borrows from the historian.

Eugenius was proceeding in that part of his discourse, when Crites
interrupted him. I see, said he, Eugenius and I are never like to
have this question decided betwixt us; for he maintains, the moderns
have acquired a new perfection in writing, I can only grant they have
altered the mode of it, Homer described his heroes men of great
appetites, lovers of beef broiled upon the coals, and good fellows;
contrary to the practice of the French romances, whose heroes neither
eat, nor drink, nor sleep, for love. Virgil makes Æneas a bold avower
of his own virtues:

_Sum pius Æneas famâ super æthera notus_;

which, in the civility of our poets, is the character of a fanfaron, or
Hector: for with us the knight takes occasion to walk out, or sleep,
to avoid the vanity of telling his own story, which the trusty squire
is ever to perform for him. So in their love-scenes, of which Eugenius
spoke last, the ancients were more hearty, we more talkative: they writ
love as it was then the mode to make it; and I will grant this much to
Eugenius, that perhaps one of their poets, had he lived in our age,

_Si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in ævum_,

as Horace says of Lucilius, he had altered many things; not that they
were not natural before, but that he might accommodate himself to the
age in which he lived. Yet in the mean time we are not to conclude any
thing rashly against those great men, but preserve to them the dignity
of masters, and give that honour to their memories,--_quos Libitina
sacravit_,--part of which we expect may be paid to us in future times.

This moderation of Crites, as it was pleasing to all the company, so
it put an end to that dispute; which Eugenius, who seemed to have the
better of the argument, would urge no farther. But Lisideius, after
he had acknowledged himself of Eugenius his opinion concerning the
ancients, yet told him, he had forborne, till his discourse were ended,
to ask him, why he preferred the English plays above those of other
nations? and whether we ought not to submit our stage to the exactness
of our next neighbours?

Though, said Eugenius, I am at all times ready to defend the honour of
my country against the French, and to maintain, we are as well able
to vanquish them with our pens, as our ancestors have been with their
swords; yet, if you please, added he, looking upon Neander, I will
commit this cause to my friend's management; his opinion of our plays
is the same with mine: and besides, there is no reason, that Crites and
I, who have now left the stage, should re-enter so suddenly upon it;
which is against the laws of comedy.

If the question had been stated, replied Lisideius, who had writ best,
the French or English, forty years ago, I should have been of your
opinion, and adjudged the honour to our own nation; but since that
time, (said he, turning towards Neander,) we have been so long together
bad Englishmen, that we had not leisure to be good poets. Beaumont,
Fletcher, and Jonson, (who were only capable of bringing us to that
degree of perfection which we have,) were just then leaving the world;
as if in an age of so much horror, wit, and those milder studies of
humanity, had no farther business among us. But the muses, who ever
follow peace, went to plant in another country: it was then that the
great Cardinal of Richelieu began to take them into his protection;
and that, by his encouragement, Corneille, and some other Frenchmen,
reformed their theatre, which before was as much below ours, as it
now surpasses it and the rest of Europe. But because Crites, in his
discourse for the ancients, has prevented me, by observing many rules
of the stage, which the moderns have borrowed from them, I shall only,
in short, demand of you, whether you are not convinced that of all
nations the French have best observed them? In the unity of time you
find them so scrupulous, that it yet remains a dispute among their
poets, whether the artificial day of twelve hours, more or less, be
not meant by Aristotle, rather than the natural one of twenty-four;
and consequently, whether all plays ought not to be reduced into that
compass. This I can testify, that in all their dramas writ within
these last twenty years and upwards, I have not observed any that have
extended the time to thirty hours. In the unity of place they are full
as scrupulous; for many of their critics limit it to that very spot of
ground where the play is supposed to begin; none of them exceed the
compass of the same town or city.

The unity of action in all their plays is yet more conspicuous; for
they do not burden them with under-plots, as the English do: which is
the reason why many scenes of our tragi-comedies carry on a design
that is nothing of kin to the main plot; and that we see two distinct
webs in a play, like those in ill-wrought stuffs; and two actions,
that is, two plays, carried on together, to the confounding of the
audience; who, before they are warm in their concernments for one part,
are diverted to another; and by that means espouse the interest of
neither. From hence likewise it arises, that the one half of our actors
are not known to the other. They keep their distances, as if they were
Montagues and Capulets, and seldom begin an acquaintance till the last
scene of the fifth act, when they are all to meet upon the stage. There
is no theatre in the world has any thing so absurd as the English
tragi-comedy; it is a drama of our own invention, and the fashion of
it is enough to proclaim it so; here a course of mirth, there another
of sadness and passion, and a third of honour and a duel: thus, in two
hours and a half we run through all the fits of Bedlam. The French
affords you as much variety on the same day, but they do it not so
unseasonably, or _mal à propos_, as we: our poets present you the play
and the farce together; and our stages still retain somewhat of the
original civility of the Red Bull:[126]

_Atque ursum et pugiles media inter carmina poscunt_.

The end of tragedies or serious plays, says Aristotle, is to beget
admiration, compassion, or concernment; but are not mirth and
compassion things incompatible? and is it not evident, that the poet
must of necessity destroy the former by intermingling of the latter?
that is, he must ruin the sole end and object of his tragedy, to
introduce somewhat that is forced into it, and is not of the body of
it. Would you not think that physician mad, who, having prescribed a
purge, should immediately order you to take restringents?

But to leave our plays, and return to theirs. I have noted one great
advantage they have had in the plotting of their tragedies; that is,
they are always grounded upon some known history: according to that
of Horace, _Ex noto fictum carmen sequar_; and in that they have so
imitated the ancients, that they have surpassed them. For the ancients,
as was observed before, took for the foundation of their plays some
poetical fiction, such as under that consideration could move but
little concernment in the audience, because they already knew the event
of it. But the French goes farther:

_Atque ita mentitur, sic veris falsa remiscet,
Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum_.

He so interweaves truth with probable fiction, that he puts a pleasing
fallacy upon us, mends the intrigues of fate, and dispenses with the
severity of history, to reward that virtue which has been rendered
to us there unfortunate. Sometimes the story has left the success so
doubtful, that the writer is free, by the privilege of a poet, to take
that which of two or more relations will best suit with his design:
as for example, in the death of Cyrus, whom Justin and some others
report to have perished in the Scythian war, but Xenophon affirms to
have died in his bed of extreme old age. Nay more, when the event is
past dispute, even then we are willing to be deceived, and the poet,
if he contrives it with appearance of truth, has all the audience of
his party; at least during the time his play is acting: so naturally we
are kind to virtue, when our own interest is not in question, that we
take it up as the general concernment of mankind. On the other side,
if you consider the historical plays of Shakespeare, they are rather
so many chronicles of kings, or the business many times of thirty or
forty years, cramped into a representation of two hours and a half;
which is not to imitate or paint nature, but rather to draw her in
miniature, to take her in little; to look upon her through the wrong
end of a perspective, and receive her images not only much less, but
infinitely more imperfect than the life: this, instead of making a play
delightful, renders it ridiculous:

_Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi_.

For the spirit of man cannot be satisfied but with truth, or at
least verisimility; and a poem is to contain, if not τὰ ἐτυμα,
yet ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, as one of the Greek poets has expressed it.

Another thing in which the French differ from us and from the
Spaniards, is, that they do not embarrass, or cumber themselves
with too much plot; they only represent so much of a story as will
constitute one whole and great action sufficient for a play: we, who
undertake more, do but multiply adventures; which, not being produced
from one another, as effects from causes, but barely following,
constitute many actions in the drama, and consequently make it many
plays.

But by pursuing closely one argument, which is not cloyed with many
turns, the French have gained more liberty for verse, in which they
write: they have leisure to dwell on a subject which deserves it;
and to represent the passions, (which we have acknowledged to be the
poet's work,) without being hurried from one thing to another, as
we are in the plays of Calderon, which we have seen lately upon our
theatres, under the name of Spanish plots. I have taken notice but of
one tragedy of ours, whose plot has that uniformity and unity of design
in it, which I have commended in the French; and that is "Rollo,"[127]
or rather, under the name of Rollo, the story of Bassianus and Geta
in Herodian: there indeed the plot is neither large nor intricate,
but just enough to fill the minds of the audience, not to cloy them.
Besides, you see it founded upon the truth of history,--only the time
of the action is not reduceable to the strictness of the rules; and you
see in some places a little farce mingled, which is below the dignity
of the other parts; and in this all our poets are extremely peccant:
even Ben Jonson himself, in "Sejanus" and "Catiline," has given us this
olio of a play, this unnatural mixture of comedy and tragedy, which
to me sounds just as ridiculously as the history of David with the
merry humours of Goliah. In "Sejanus" you may take notice of the scene
betwixt Livia and the physician, which is a pleasant satire upon the
artificial helps of beauty: in "Catiline" you may see the parliament of
women; the little envies of them to one another; and all that passes
betwixt Curio and Fulvia: scenes admirable in their kind, but of an ill
mingle with the rest.

But I return again to the French writers, who, as I have said, do not
burden themselves too much with plot, which has been reproached to them
by an ingenious person of our nation[128] as a fault; for he says,
they commonly make but one person considerable in a play; they dwell
on him, and his concernments, while the rest of the persons are only
subservient to set him off. If he intends this by it,--that there is
one person in the play who is of greater dignity than the rest, he must
tax, not only theirs, but those of the ancients, and, which he would
be loth to do, the best of ours; for it is impossible but that one
person must be more conspicuous in it than any other, and consequently
the greatest share in the action must devolve on him. We see it so in
the management of all affairs; even in the most equal aristocracy, the
balance cannot be so justly poised, but some one will be superior to
the rest, either in parts, fortune, interest, or the consideration of
some glorious exploit; which will reduce the greatest part of business
into his hands.

But, if he would have us to imagine, that in exalting one character the
rest of them are neglected, and that all of them have not some share
or other in the action of the play, I desire him to produce any of
Corneille's tragedies, wherein every person (like so many servants in a
well-governed family) has not some employment, and who is not necessary
to the carrying on of the plot, or at least to your understanding it.

There are indeed some protatic persons in the ancients, whom they make
use of in their plays, either to hear, or give the relation: but the
French avoid this with great address, making their narrations only
to, or by such, who are some way interested in the main design. And
now I am speaking of relations, I cannot take a fitter opportunity
to add this in favour of the French, that they often use them with
better judgment and more _á propos_ than the English do. Not that I
commend narrations in general,--but there are two sorts of them; one,
of those things which are antecedent to the play, and are related to
make the conduct of it more clear to us; but it is a fault to chuse
such subjects for the stage as will force us on that rock, because
we see they are seldom listened to by the audience, and that is many
times the ruin of the play; for, being once let pass without attention,
the audience can never recover themselves to understand the plot; and
indeed it is somewhat unreasonable, that they should be put to so much
trouble, as, that to comprehend what passes in their sight, they must
have recourse to what was done, perhaps, ten or twenty years ago.

But there is another sort of relations, that is, of things happening in
the action of the play, and supposed to be done behind the scenes; and
this is many times both convenient and beautiful: for, by it the French
avoid the tumult to which we are subject in England, by representing
duels, battles, and the like; which renders our stage too like the
theatres where they fight prizes. For what is more ridiculous than to
represent an army with a drum and five men behind it; all which, the
hero of the other side is to drive in before him? or to see a duel
fought, and one slain with two or three thrusts of the foils, which we
know are so blunted, that we might give a man an hour to kill another
in good earnest with them?

I have observed, that in all our tragedies the audience cannot forbear
laughing when the actors are to die; it is the most comic part of the
whole play. All passions may be lively represented on the stage, if
to the well-writing of them the actor supplies a good commanded voice,
and limbs that move easily, and without stiffness; but there are many
actions which can never be imitated to a just height: dying especially
is a thing which none but a Roman gladiator could naturally perform
on the stage, when he did not imitate, or represent, but do it; and
therefore it is better to omit the representation of it.

The words of a good writer, which describe it lively, will make a
deeper impression of belief in us, than all the actor can insinuate
into us, when he seems to fall dead before us; as a poet in the
description of a beautiful garden, or a meadow, will please our
imagination more than the place itself can please our sight. When we
see death represented, we are convinced it is but fiction; but when we
hear it related, our eyes (the strongest witnesses) are wanting, which
might have undeceived us; and we are all willing to favour the slight
when the poet does not too grossly impose on us. They, therefore, who
imagine these relations would make no concernment in the audience,
are deceived, by confounding them with the other, which are of things
antecedent to the play: those are made often in cold blood, as I may
say, to the audience; but these are warmed with our concernments,
which were before awakened in the play. What the philosophers say of
motion, that, when it is once begun, it continues of itself, and will
do so to eternity, without some stop put to it, is clearly true on
this occasion: the soul, being already moved with the characters and
fortunes of those imaginary persons, continues going of its own accord;
and we are no more weary to hear what becomes of them when they are not
on the stage, than we are to listen to the news of an absent mistress.
But it is objected, that if one part of the play may be related, then
why not all? I answer, some parts of the action are more fit to be
represented, some to be related. Corneille says judiciously, that the
poet is not obliged to expose to view all particular actions which
conduce to the principal: he ought to select such of them to be seen,
which will appear with the greatest beauty, either by the magnificence
of the show, or the vehemence of passions which they produce, or some
other charm which they have in them, and let the rest arrive to the
audience by narration. It is a great mistake in us to believe the
French present no part of the action on the stage: every alteration or
crossing of a design, every new-sprung passion, and turn of it, is a
part of the action, and much the noblest, except we conceive nothing
to be action till the players come to blows; as if the painting of the
hero's mind were not more properly the poet's work, than the strength
of his body. Nor does this any thing contradict the opinion of Horace,
where he tells us,

_Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus_.

For he says immediately after,

------------_Non tamen intus
Digna geri promes in scenam_; multaq; _tolles
Ex oculis, quæ mox narret facundia præsens_.

Among which many he recounts some:

_Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet,
Aut in avem Progne mutetur, Cadmus in anguem_, &c.

That is, those actions which by reason of their cruelty will cause
aversion in us, or by reason of their impossibility, unbelief, ought
either wholly to be avoided by a poet, or only delivered by narration.
To which we may have leave to add such as, to avoid tumult, (as was
before hinted,) or to reduce the plot into a more reasonable compass of
time, or for defect of beauty in them, are rather to be related than
presented to the eye. Examples of all these kinds are frequent, not
only among all the ancients, but in the best received of our English
poets. We find Ben Jonson using them in his "Magnetic Lady," where one
comes out from dinner, and relates the quarrels and disorders of it to
save the undecent appearance of them on the stage, and to abbreviate
the story: and this in express imitation of Terence, who had done the
same before him in his "Eunuch," where Pythias makes the like relation
of what had happened within at the Soldier's entertainment. The
relations, likewise, of Sejanus's death, and the prodigies before it,
are remarkable; the one of which was hid from sight to avoid the horror
and tumult of the representation; the other, to shun the introducing
of things impossible to be believed. In that excellent play, "The King
and no King," Fletcher goes yet farther; for the whole unravelling of
the plot is done by narration in the fifth act, after the manner of
the ancients; and it moves great concernment in the audience, though
it be only a relation of what was done many years before the play. I
could multiply other instances, but these are sufficient to prove, that
there is no error in chusing a subject which requires this sort of
narrations; in the ill management of them, there may.

But I find I have been too long in this discourse, since the French
have many other excellencies not common to us; as that you never see
any of their plays end with a conversion, or simple change of will,
which is the ordinary way which our poets use to end theirs. It shews
little art in the conclusion of a dramatic poem, when they who have
hindered the felicity during the four acts, desist from it in the
fifth, without some powerful cause to take them off their design; and
though I deny not but such reasons may be found, yet it is a path that
is cautiously to be trod, and the poet is to be sure he convinces the
audience, that the motive is strong enough. [129] As for example, the
conversion of the Usurer in "The Scornful Lady," seems to me a little
forced; for, being an usurer, which implies a lover of money to the
highest degree of covetousness, (and such the poet has represented
him,) the account he gives for the sudden change is, that he has been
duped by the wild young fellow; which in reason might render him more
wary another time, and make him punish himself with harder fare and
coarser clothes to get up again what he had lost: but that he should
look on it as a judgment, and so repent, we may expect to hear in a
sermon, but I should never endure it in a play.

I pass by this; neither will I insist on the care they take, that no
person after his first entrance shall ever appear, but the business
which brings him upon the stage shall be evident; which rule, if
observed, must needs render all the events in the play more natural;
for there you see the probability of every accident, in the cause that
produced it; and that which appears chance in the play, will seem so
reasonable to you, that you will there find it almost necessary: so
that in the exit of the actor you have a clear account of his purpose
and design in the next entrance; (though, if the scene be well wrought,
the event will commonly deceive you;) for there is nothing so absurd,
says Corneille, as for an actor to leave the stage, only because he has
no more to say.

I should now speak of the beauty of their rhyme, and the just reason
I have to prefer that way of writing in tragedies before ours in
blank-verse; but because it is partly received by us, and therefore not
altogether peculiar to them, I will say no more of it in relation to
their plays. For our own, I doubt not but it will exceedingly beautify
them; and I can see but one reason why it should not generally obtain,
that is, because our poets write so ill in it. This indeed may prove
a more prevailing argument than all others which are used to destroy
it, and therefore I am only troubled when great and judicious poets,
and those who are acknowledged such, have writ or spoke against it: as
for others, they are to be answered by that one sentence of an ancient
author:[130] _Sed ut primo ad consequendos eos quos priores ducimus,
accendimur, ita ubi aut præteriri, aut æquari eos posse desperavimus,
studium cum spe senescit: quod, scilicet, assequi non potest, sequi
desinit;--prœteritoque eo in quo eminere non possumus, aliquid in
quo nitamur, conquirimus_.

Lisideius concluded in this manner; and Neander, after a little pause,
thus answered him:

I shall grant Lisideius, without much dispute, a great part of what he
has urged against us; for I acknowledge, that the French contrive their
plots more regularly, and observe the laws of comedy, and decorum of
the stage, (to speak generally,) with more exactness than the English.
Farther, I deny not but he has taxed us justly in some irregularities
of ours, which he has mentioned; yet, after all, I am of opinion, that
neither our faults, nor their virtues, are considerable enough to place
them above us.

For the lively imitation of nature being in the definition of a play,
those which best fulfil that law, ought to be esteemed superior to
the others. 'Tis true, those beauties of the French poesy are such as
will raise perfection higher where it is, but are not sufficient to
give it where it is not: they are indeed the beauties of a statue,
but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which
is imitation of humour and passions: and this Lisideius himself, or
any other, however biassed to their party, cannot but acknowledge, if
he will either compare the humours of our comedies, or the characters
of our serious plays, with theirs. He who will look upon theirs which
have been written till these last ten years, or thereabouts, will find
it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst
them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except
"The Liar," and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it
came upon the English stage, though well translated, and that part
of Dorant acted[131] to so much advantage as I am confident it never
received in its own country, the most favourable to it would not put it
in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's. In the rest of
Corneille's comedies you have little humour; he tells you himself, his
way is, first to shew two lovers in good intelligence with each other;
in the working up of the play, to embroil them by some mistake, and in
the latter end to clear it, and reconcile them.

But of late years Moliere, the younger Corneille, Quinault, and some
others, have been imitating afar off the quick turns and graces of the
English stage. They have mixed their serious plays with mirth, like
our tragi-comedies, since the death of Cardinal Richelieu,[132] which
Lisideius, and many others, not observing, have commended that in them
for a virtue, which they themselves no longer practise. Most of their
new plays are, like some of ours, derived from the Spanish novels.
There is scarce one of them without a veil, and a trusty Diego, who
drolls much after the rate of the "Adventures. "[133] But their humours,
if I may grace them with that name, are so thin sown, that never above
one of them comes up in any play. I dare take upon me to find more
variety of them in some one play of Ben Jonson's, than in all theirs
together: as he who has seen the "Alchemist," "The Silent Woman," or
"Bartholomew Fair," cannot but acknowledge with me.

I grant the French have performed what was possible on the ground-work
of the Spanish plays; what was pleasant before, they have made
regular: but there is not above one good play to be writ on all those
plots; they are too much alike to please often, which we need not
the experience of our own stage to justify. As for their new way of
mingling mirth with serious plot, I do not, with Lisideius, condemn
the thing, though I cannot approve their manner of doing it. He tells
us, we cannot so speedily recollect ourselves after a scene of great
passion and concernment, as to pass to another of mirth and humour, and
to enjoy it with any relish: but why should he imagine the soul of man
more heavy than his senses? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant
object to a pleasant, in a much shorter time than is required to
this? and does not the unpleasantness of the first commend the beauty
of the latter? The old rule of logic might have convinced him, that
contraries, when placed near, set off each other. A continued gravity
keeps the spirit too much bent; we must refresh it sometimes, as we
bait in a journey, that we may go on with greater ease. A scene of
mirth, mixed with tragedy, has the same effect upon us which our music
has betwixt the acts; which we find a relief to us from the best plots
and language of the stage, if the discourses have been long. I must
therefore have stronger arguments, ere I am convinced that compassion
and mirth in the same subject destroy each other; and in the mean
time, cannot but conclude, to the honour of our nation, that we have
invented, increased, and perfected, a more pleasant way of writing
for the stage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any
nation, which is tragi-comedy.

And this leads me to wonder why Lisideius and many others should
cry up the barrenness of the French plots, above the variety and
copiousness of the English. Their plots are single, they carry on one
design, which is pushed forward by all the actors, every scene in the
play contributing and moving towards it. Our plays, besides the main
design, have under-plots, or by-concernments, of less considerable
persons and intrigues, which are carried on with the motion of the
main plot: as they say the orb of the fixed stars, and those of the
planets, though they have motions of their own, are whirled about by
the motion of the _primum mobile_, in which they are contained. That
similitude expresses much of the English stage; for if contrary motions
may be found in nature to agree; if a planet can go east and west at
the same time;--one way by virtue of his own motion, the other by the
force of the first mover;--it will not be difficult to imagine how the
under-plot, which is only different, not contrary to the great design,
may naturally be conducted along with it.

Eugenius has already shewn us, from the confession of the French
poets, that the unity of action is sufficiently preserved, if all the
imperfect actions of the play are conducing to the main design; but
when those petty intrigues of a play are so ill ordered, that they
have no coherence with the other, I must grant that Lisideius has
reason to tax that want of due connection; for co-ordination in a
play is as dangerous and unnatural as in a state. In the mean time he
must acknowledge, our variety, if well ordered, will afford a greater
pleasure to the audience.

As for his other argument, that by pursuing one single theme they gain
an advantage to express and work up the passions, I wish any example he
could bring from them would make it good; for I confess their verses
are to me the coldest I have ever read. Neither, indeed, is it possible
for them, in the way they take, so to express passion, as that the
effects of it should appear in the concernment of an audience, their
speeches being so many declamations, which tire us with the length; so
that instead of persuading us to grieve for their imaginary heroes,
we are concerned for our own trouble, as we are in tedious visits of
bad company; we are in pain till they are gone. When the French stage
came to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were
introduced, to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the
"Cinna" and the "Pompey;" they are not so properly to be called plays,
as long discourses of reason of state; and "Polieucte" in matters
of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since
that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the
hour-glass, like our parsons;[134] nay, they account it the grace of
their parts, and think themselves disparaged by the poet, if they may
not twice or thrice in a play entertain the audience with a speech of
an hundred lines. I deny not but this may suit well enough with the
French; for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted
at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither
to make themselves more serious: and this I conceive to be one reason,
why comedies are more pleasing to us, and tragedies to them. But to
speak generally: it cannot be denied, that short speeches and replies
are more apt to move the passions, and beget concernment in us, than
the other; for it is unnatural for any one, in a gust of passion, to
speak long together; or for another, in the same condition, to suffer
him without interruption. Grief and passion are like floods raised
in little brooks by a sudden rain; they are quickly up, and if the
concernment be poured unexpectedly in upon us, it overflows us: But
a long sober shower gives them leisure to run out as they came in,
without troubling the ordinary current. As for comedy, repartee is one
of its chiefest graces; the greatest pleasure of the audience is a
chace of wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed. And this our
forefathers, if not we, have had in Fletcher's plays, to a much higher
degree of perfection, than the French poets can reasonably hope to
reach.

There is another part of Lisideius's discourse, in which he has rather
excused our neighbours, than commended them; that is, for aiming only
to make one person considerable in their plays. It is very true what
he has urged, that one character in all plays, even without the poet's
care, will have advantage of all the others; and that the design of
the whole drama will chiefly depend on it. But this hinders not that
there may be more shining characters in the play: many persons of a
second magnitude, nay, some so very near, so almost equal to the first,
that greatness may be opposed to greatness, and all the persons be
made considerable, not only by their quality, but their action. It is
evident, that the more the persons are, the greater will be the variety
of the plot. If then the parts are managed so regularly, that the
beauty of the whole be kept entire, and that the variety become not a
perplexed and confused mass of accidents, you will find it infinitely
pleasing to be led in a labyrinth of design, where you see some of your
way before you, yet discern not the end till you arrive at it. And that
all this is practicable, I can produce for examples many of our English
plays: As "The Maid's Tragedy," "The Alchemist," "The Silent Woman:" I
was going to have named "The Fox," but that the unity of design seems
not exactly observed in it; for there appear two actions in the play;
the first naturally ending with the fourth act, the second forced from
it in the fifth: which yet is the less to be condemned in him, because
the disguise of Volpone, though it suited not with his character
as a crafty or covetous person, agreed well enough with that of a
voluptuary;[135] and by it the poet gained the end at which he aimed,
the punishment of vice, and the reward of virtue, both which that
disguise produced. So that to judge equally of it, it was an excellent
fifth act, but not so naturally proceeding from the former.

But to leave this, and pass to the latter part of Lisideius's
discourse, which concerns relations, I must acknowledge with him, that
the French have reason to hide that part of the action which would
occasion too much tumult on the stage, and to chuse rather to have
it made known by narration to the audience. Farther, I think it very
convenient, for the reasons he has given, that all incredible actions
were removed; but, whether custom has so insinuated itself into our
countrymen, or nature has so formed them to fierceness, I know not;
but they will scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to
be taken from them. And indeed, the indecency of tumults is all which
can be objected against fighting: for why may not our imagination as
well suffer itself to be deluded with the probability of it, as with
any other thing in the play? For my part, I can with as great ease
persuade myself, that the blows are given in good earnest, as I can,
that they who strike them are kings or princes, or those persons which
they represent. For objects of incredibility,--I would be satisfied
from Lisideius, whether we have any so removed from all appearance of
truth, as are those of Corneille's "Andromede;" a play which has been
frequented the most of any he has writ. If the Perseus, or the son of
an heathen god, the Pegasus, and the Monster, were not capable to choke
a strong belief, let him blame any representation of ours hereafter.
Those indeed were objects of delight; yet the reason is the same as to
the probability; for he makes it not a ballet, or masque, but a play,
which is to resemble truth. But for death, that it ought not to be
represented, I have, besides the arguments alleged by Lisideius, the
authority of Ben Jonson, who has forborne it in his tragedies; for both
the death of Sejanus and Catiline are related; though, in the latter, I
cannot but observe one irregularity of that great poet; he has removed
the scene in the same act, from Rome to Catiline's army, and from
thence again to Rome; and besides, has allowed a very considerable time
after Catiline's speech, for the striking of the battle, and the return
of Petreius, who is to relate the event of it to the senate; which I
should not animadvert on him, who was otherwise a painful observer of
τὸ πρεπὸν, or the _decorum_ of the stage, if he had not used
extreme severity in his judgment on the incomparable Shakespeare for
the same fault. [136] To conclude on this subject of relations, if we
are to be blamed for shewing too much of the action, the French are as
faulty for discovering too little of it; a mean betwixt both should
be observed by every judicious writer, so as the audience may neither
be left unsatisfied by not seeing what is beautiful, or shocked by
beholding what is either incredible or undecent.

I hope I have already proved in this discourse, that though we are
not altogether so punctual as the French, in observing the laws of
comedy, yet our errors are so few, and little, and those things
wherein we excel them so considerable, that we ought of right to be
preferred before them. But what will Lisideius say, if they themselves
acknowledge they are too strictly bounded by those laws, for breaking
which he has blamed the English? I will allege Corneille's words, as
I find them in the end of his Discourse of the three Unities: _Il
est facile aux speculatifs d'estre severes_, &c. "It is easy for
speculative persons to judge severely; but if they would produce to
public view ten or twelve pieces of this nature, they would perhaps
give more latitude to the rules than I have done, when, by experience,
they had known how much we are limited and constrained by them, and
how many beauties of the stage they banished from it. " To illustrate a
little what he has said:--by their servile observations of the unities
of time and place, and integrity of scenes, they have brought on
themselves that dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination, which
may be observed in all their plays. How many beautiful accidents might
naturally happen in two or three days, which cannot arrive with any
probability in the compass of twenty-four hours? There is time to be
allowed also for maturity of design, which amongst great and prudent
persons, such as are often represented in tragedy, cannot, with any
likelihood of truth, be brought to pass at so short a warning. Farther,
by tying themselves strictly to the unity of place, and unbroken
scenes, they are forced many times to omit some beauties which cannot
be shewn where the act began; but might, if the scene were interrupted,
and the stage cleared for the persons to enter in another place; and
therefore the French poets are often forced upon absurdities: for if
the act begins in a chamber, all the persons in the play must have some
business or other to come thither, or else they are not to be shewn
that act; and sometimes their characters are very unfitting to appear
there: as suppose it were the king's bed-chamber, yet the meanest man
in the tragedy must come and dispatch his business there, rather than
in the lobby, or court-yard, (which is fitter for him,) for fear the
stage should be cleared, and the scenes broken. Many times they fall by
it into a greater inconvenience; for they keep their scenes unbroken,
and yet change the place; as in one of their newest plays, where the
act begins in the street. There a gentleman is to meet his friend; he
sees him with his man, coming out from his father's house; they talk
together, and the first goes out: the second, who is a lover, has made
an appointment with his mistress; she appears at the window, and then
we are to imagine the scene lies under it. This gentleman is called
away, and leaves his servant with his mistress: presently her father is
heard from within; the young lady is afraid the serving-man should be
discovered, and thrusts him into a place of safety, which is supposed
to be her closet. After this, the father enters to the daughter, and
now the scene is in a house: for he is seeking from one room to another
for this poor Philipin, or French Diego, who is heard from within,
drolling and breaking many a miserable conceit on the subject of his
sad condition. In this ridiculous manner the play goes forward, the
stage being never empty all the while: so that the street, the window,
the two houses, and the closet, are made to walk about, and the persons
to stand still. Now, what, I beseech you, is more easy than to write
a regular French play, or more difficult than to write an irregular
English one, like those of Fletcher, or of Shakespeare?

If they content themselves, as Corneille did, with some flat design,
which, like an ill riddle, is found out ere it be half proposed, such
plots we can make every way regular as easily as they; but whenever
they endeavour to rise to any quick turns and counter-turns of plot,
as some of them have attempted, since Corneille's plays have been less
in vogue, you see they write as irregularly as we, though they cover
it more speciously. Hence the reason is perspicuous, why no French
plays, when translated, have, or ever can succeed on the English stage.
For, if you consider the plots, our own are fuller of variety; if the
writing, ours are more quick and fuller of spirit; and therefore 'tis a
strange mistake in those who decry the way of writing plays in verse,
as if the English therein imitated the French. We have borrowed nothing
from them; our plots are weaved in English looms: we endeavour therein
to follow the variety and greatness of characters, which are derived
to us from Shakespeare and Fletcher; the copiousness and well-knitting
of the intrigues we have from Jonson; and for the verse itself we have
English precedents of elder date than any of Corneille's plays. Not to
name our old comedies before Shakespeare, which were all writ in verse
of six feet, or Alexandrines, such as the French now use,--[137] I can
shew in Shakespeare, many scenes of rhyme together, and the like in
Ben Jonson's tragedies: in "Catiline" and "Sejanus" sometimes thirty
or forty lines,--I mean besides the chorus, or the monologues; which,
by the way, shewed Ben no enemy to this way of writing, especially if
you read his "Sad Shepherd," which goes sometimes on rhyme, sometimes
on blank verse, like an horse who eases himself on trot and amble.
You find him likewise commending Fletcher's pastoral of "The Faithful
Shepherdess," which is for the most part rhyme, though not refined to
that purity to which it hath since been brought. And these examples are
enough to clear us from a servile imitation of the French.

But to return whence I have digressed: I dare boldly affirm these two
things of the English drama;--First, that we have many plays of ours
as regular as any of theirs, and which, besides, have more variety
of plot and characters; and, secondly, that in most of the irregular
plays of Shakespeare or Fletcher, (for Ben Jonson's are for the most
part regular,) there is a more masculine fancy, and greater spirit in
the writing, than there is in any of the French. I could produce even
in Shakespeare's and Fletcher's works, some plays which are almost
exactly formed; as the "Merry Wives of Windsor," and "The Scornful
Lady:" but, because (generally speaking) Shakespeare, who writ first,
did not perfectly observe the laws of comedy, and Fletcher, who came
nearer to perfection, yet through carelessness made many faults; I will
take the pattern of a perfect play from Ben Jonson, who was a careful
and learned observer of the dramatic laws, and from all his comedies I
shall select "The Silent Woman;" of which I will make a short examen,
according to those rules which the French observe.

As Neander was beginning to examine "The Silent Woman," Eugenius,
earnestly regarding him; I beseech you, Neander, said he, gratify the
company, and me in particular, so far as, before you speak of the play,
to give us a character of the author; and tell us frankly your opinion,
whether you do not think all writers, both French and English, ought to
give place to him?

I fear, replied Neander, that, in obeying your commands, I shall draw
some envy on myself. Besides, in performing them, it will be first
necessary to speak somewhat of Shakespeare and Fletcher, his rivals in
poesy; and one of them, in my opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his
superior.