Preface to Shakespeare | Page 7

disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or
exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or
enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he
leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he
will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A
quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was
content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A
quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and
was content to lose it.
It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this writer,
I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities; his violation of
those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint

authority of poets and of criticks.
For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to critical
justice, without making any other demand in his favour, than that
which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his virtues be
rated with his failings: But, from the censure which this irregularity
may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to that learning which
I must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him.
His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to
any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they
expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be
understood, that the incidents be various and affecting, and the
characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other unity is intended,
and therefore none is to be sought.
In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He
has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly
unravelled; he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover it,
for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the poet
of nature: But his plan has commonly what Aristotle requires, a
beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with
another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are
perhaps some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is
much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system
makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of
expectation.
To the unities of time and place he has shewn no regard, and perhaps a
nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their
value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of
Corneille, they have very generally received by discovering that they
have given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor.
The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the
supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it
impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed
to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in
the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings,
while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and
returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the
untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and

fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality.
From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of
place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandria,
cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not
the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have transported him;
he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he
knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot
become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis.
Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the
misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or
reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of Shakespeare,
that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a position, which,
while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces
to be false. It is false, that any representation is mistaken for reality;
that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a
single moment, was ever credited.
The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at
Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens
the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that
his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives