Imatges de pàgina
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during these intervals, the ftage is totally evacuated, and the fpectacle fufpended. This conftruction qualifies our drama for fubjects spread through a wide space. both of time and of place. The time supposed to pass during the fufpenfion of the representation, is not measured by the time of the fufpenfion; nor is any connection formed, betwixt the box we fit in and the place where things are fupposed to be tranfacted in our abfence: and, by that means, many subjects can be justly reprefented in our theatres, for which there was no place in those of ancient Greece. This doctrine may be illuftrated, by comparing a modern play to a fet of historical pictures: let us fuppofe them five in number, and the refemblance will be complete. Each of the pictures resembles an act in one of our plays. There must ncceffarily be

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the ftricteft unity of place and time in each picture; and the fame neceffity requires thefe two unities during each act of a play, because, during an act, there is no interruption in the fpectacle. Now, when we view in fucceffion a number of fuch hiftorical pictures, let it be, for example, the hiftory of Alexander by Le Brun, we have no difficulty to conceive, that months or years have paffed betwixt the fubjects exhibited in two different pictures, though the interruption is imperceptible in paffing our eyes from the one to the other. We have as little dif ficulty to conceive a change of place, however great. In this matter, there is truly no difference betwixt five acts of a modern play, and five fuch pictures. Where the reprefentation is fufpended, we can with the greateft facility fuppofe any length of time, or any change of place.

place. The fpectator, it is true, may be confcious that the real time and place are not the fame with what are employ'd in the representation, even including the intervals; but this is a work of reflection. He may also be confcious that Garrick is not king Lear; that the playhoufe is not Dover cliffs; nor the noife he hears thunder and lightning. In a word, during an interruption of the representation, it is not more difficult for a fpectator to imagine himself carried from place to place, and from one period of time to another, than at once, when the fcene first opens, to be carried from London to Rome, or from the prefent .time to two thousand years back. And it must appear ridiculous, that a critic, who makes no difficulty of fuppofing candle-light to be fun-fhine, and fome painted canvaffes a palace or a prison,

fhould

hould affect fo much difficulty in imagining a latitude of place or of time in. the story, beyond what is neceffary in the representation. *" I confider this remark as decifive in respect to the unities, and fets the abfurd exactness of the French critics in a juft light.

My lord Kaimes's obfervation refutes the following remarks of Batteux: "The unity of time fuppofes the space of a natural day the fun makes in, or the revolution of, twenty-four hours, by which is meant, that the action is to begin and end in that fpace, for the reafon we have given elfewhere. And indeed this rule is not fo much a rule of rigour as a modification,: or a kind of foftening of the strict rule. The abfolute rule confines the duration of the action to the time actually taken up in reprefentation, that is, to begin and end

Elements of Criticifm, vol. iii. p. 275.

within two or three hours at fartheft. We tafte the pleasure arifing from this degree of perfection in the tragedies of Oedipus, the Horatii, and Athaliah. But as it is very rare to meet with fubjects that can be confined within fuch narrow limits; cuftom has enlarged the rule, and extended the duration of the action to twenty-four hours. Unity of place taken in the rigorous fenfe of the term, requires that every thing should pafs exactly on the fame fpot. The fame indulgence which enlarged the limits of the time, will not be admitted here. It is not so easy to deceive the eye, which is always attentively fixed on the representation, as the mind; which in cafes of this kind is, in a manner, wholly abforbed in imagination and fentiment. Befides that, when the actors trefpafs a little upen the unity of time, they have art enough

not

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