defectuous in the circumstances, which grieves me, because it might
not remain as an exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty
both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal
actions. For where the stage should always represent but one place;
and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by
Aristotle's precept, and common reason, but one day; there is both
many days and many places inartificially imagined.

But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the rest? where
you shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so
many other under kingdoms, that the player, when he comes in, must
ever begin with telling where he is, {84} or else the tale will not
be conceived. Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather
flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and
by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, then we are to
blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes
out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable
beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while, in the meantime,
two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and
then, what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?

Now of time they are much more liberal; for ordinary it is, that two
young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with
child; delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth
in love, and is ready to get another child; and all this in two
hours' space; which, how absurd it is in sense, even sense may
imagine; and art hath taught and all ancient examples justified, and
at this day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in. Yet will
some bring in an example of the Eunuch in Terence, that containeth
matter of two days, yet far short of twenty years. True it is, and