is alter'd by Mr. _Dryden_.

It is the same Magick that raises the Fairies in _Midsummer Night's
Dream_, the Witches in _Macbeth_, and the Ghost in _Hamlet_, with
Thoughts and Language so proper to the Parts they sustain, and so
peculiar to the Talent of this Writer. But of the two last of these
Plays I shall have occasion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr.
_Shakespear_. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by
those Rules which are establish'd by _Aristotle_, and taken from the
Model of the _Grecian_ Stage, it would be no very hard Task to find a
great many Faults: But as _Shakespear_ liv'd under a kind of mere Light
of Nature, and had never been made acquainted with the Regularity of
those written Precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a Law he
knew nothing of. We are to consider him as a Man that liv'd in a State
of almost universal License and Ignorance: There was no establish'd
Judge, but every one took the liberty to Write according to the Dictates
of his own Fancy. When one considers, that there is not one Play before
him of a Reputation good enough to entitle it to an Appearance on the
present Stage, it cannot but be a Matter of great Wonder that he should
advance Dramatick Poetry so far as he did. The Fable is what is
generally plac'd the first, among those that are reckon'd the
constituent Parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not, perhaps, as it is
the most Difficult or Beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be
thought of in the Contrivance and Course of the whole; and with the
Fable ought to be consider'd, the fit Disposition, Order and Conduct of
its several Parts. As it is not in this Province of the _Drama_ that the
Strength and Mastery of _Shakespear_ lay, so I shall not undertake the
tedious and ill-natur'd Trouble to point out the several Faults he was
guilty of in it. His Tales were seldom invented, but rather taken either
from true History, or Novels and Romances: And he commonly made use of