Preface to Shakespeare | Page 8

in
the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this, may
imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of
the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium.
Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the
spectator can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are
Alexander and Caesar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain
of Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above
the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean
poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is
no reason why a mind thus wandering in extasy should count the clock,
or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains
that can make the stage a field.
The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know,
from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the
players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines
recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to
some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different

actions that compleat a story may be in places very remote from each
other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent
first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither
Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre?
By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time
required by the fable elapses for the most part between the acts; for, of
so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is
the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are
represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without
absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus;
we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know
that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor
Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of
successive actions, and why may not the second imitation represent an
action that happened years after the first; if it be so connected with it,
that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all
modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of
years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we
easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it
to be contracted when we only see their imitation.
It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited
with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a
just picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he
would himself feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be
suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that
the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we
ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we
fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment;
but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of
misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that
death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our
consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they
would please no more.
Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for
realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the
imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not
supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we

consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside
us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the
history of "Henry the Fifth", yet no man takes his book for the field of
Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants
that encrease or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more
powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always
less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what
voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy
of Cato.
A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident,
that the action is not supposed to be real, and it follows that between
the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed