Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured,
as belonging to the ground-work of the story rather than to the drama
itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from
all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's
division of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia.

But, although the other excellencies of the drama besides this dramatic
probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination
of the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they
tend to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the
chief end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,--yet
they do not on that account cease to be ends themselves; and we must
remember that, as such, they carry their own justification with them, as
long as they do not contravene or interrupt the total illusion. It is
not even always, or of necessity, an objection to them, that they
prevent the illusion from rising to as great a height as it might
otherwise have attained;--it is enough that they are simply compatible
with as high a degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon
particular occasions, a palpable improbability may be hazarded by a
great genius for the express purpose of keeping down the interest of a
merely instrumental scene, which would otherwise make too great an
impression for the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been
invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not,
have smiled in contempt at the regret, that the broom-twigs and scrubby
bushes at the back of some of his grand pictures were not as probable
trees as those in the exhibition.

The Tempest is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the
interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture,
or the natural connexion of events,--but is a birth of the imagination,