together, to almost a degree of impossibility, from a too scrupulous
adherence to the unities. The English should restrain the licentiousness
of their poets, and the French enlarge the liberty of theirs; their poets
are the greatest slaves in their country, and that is a bold word; ours
are the most tumultuous subjects in England, and that is saying a good
deal. Under such regulations one might hope to see a play in which one
should not be lulled to sleep by the length of a monotonical declamation,
nor frightened and shocked by the barbarity of the action. The unity of
time extended occasionally to three or four days, and the unity of place
broke into, as far as the same street, or sometimes the same town; both
which, I will affirm, are as probable as four-and-twenty hours, and the
same room.

More indulgence too, in my mind, should be shown, than the French are
willing to allow, to bright thoughts, and to shining images; for though,
I confess, it is not very natural for a hero or a princess to say fine
things in all the violence of grief, love, rage, etc., yet, I can as well
suppose that, as I can that they should talk to themselves for half an
hour; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on,
unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity, the choruses of the
ancients. Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of
self-deception; we must lend ourselves a little to the delusion; and I am
very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than the French
do.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us. In
nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak,
and speak with dignity too. Hence the necessity of their being written in
verse, and unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their
language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato the Stoic, expiring at