much longer interval than that which is filled up by the actual time of the music which is performed between the acts; otherwise he might be invited to come again the next day for the following act, to make it appear the more natural to him. The division into acts had its origin with the new comedy, when the chorus was excluded. Horace prescribes that a play shall neither have more nor fewer than five acts. The rule is so unessential that Wieland was of opinion Horace was here laughing at the young Pisos in urging the importance of an observance like this with such solemnity of tone. If in the ancient tragedy we are to suppose the conclusion of an act wherever the stage remains empty, and the chorus alone proceeds with dancing and song, we shall often have fewer than five acts, but often also more than five. As an observation that, in a representation of between two and three hours, so many resting points are necessary for the attention, it may be allowed to pass; but I should be anxious to hear any reason derived from the nature of dramatic poetry, why a drama must have so many and only so many divisions. But the world is governed by custom and tradition: attempts to diminish the number of acts have been favourably received; but it is still considered as a most dangerous and unhallowed innovation to exceed the consecrated number of five.* The division into acts seems to me erroneous, when nothing takes place in the intervals, as is so often the case in modern pieces, and when we perceive the persons at the beginning of the new act in exactly the same situation as at the close of the foregoing. And yet this standing still has given much less offence than the adoption of a considerable interval, or the representation of extravagant incidents, because the former is merely a negative error. The romantic poets take the liberty of changing the scene, even during the course of an act. As the stage is always previously empty, these are interruptions of the continuity, which justify them in the adoption of so many intervals. If we stumble at this, but admit the propriety of a division into acts, we have only to consider these changes of scene in the light of a greater number of short acts. It will perhaps be argued, this is justifying one error by another, the violation of the unity of time by the violation of the unity of place: we shall therefore proceed to point out at more length the insufficiency of the last mentioned rule. In vain, as we have already said, shall we seek for any opinion in Aristotle on the subject. It is asserted that the rule was ob Three unities, five acts: why not seven persons? These rules seem to proceed according to odd numbers. served by the ancients. Not always, only generally. Of seven pieces of Eschylus, and the same number of Sophocles, there are two, the Eumenides and Ajax, in which the scene is changed. That they generally retain the same scene follows naturally from the constant presence of the chorus, which must be got rid of in a suitable manner before a change can take place. But then we have to consider that their scene represented a much wider extent than ours in most cases; not a mere room, but the open space before several buildings: and the disclosing the interior of a house by means of the encyclema, may be considered in the same light as the drawing a back curtain on our stage. The objection to the change of scene is also founded on the erroneous idea of illusion which we have already attempted to refute. We must not transfer the action to another place, lest the illusion should be dispelled. But even allowing that we are in reality to consider the place represented as the actual place, in this case the decoration of our scene ought to be altogether different from what it now is. Johnson, a critic, in general an advocate for strict rules, very judiciously observes, that if our imagination once goes so far as to transport us eighteen hundred years back to Alexandria, and allows us to suppose the story of Antony and Cleopatra to be taking place before us, the second step of transporting ourselves from Alexandria to Rome, is much more easy. The capability of our mind to fly in thought through the immensity of time and space with the rapidity of lightning is well known and acknowledged in real life; and shall poetry, the object of which is to add all manner of wings to our imagination, and which has at command all the magic of genuine illusion, that is, of animated and overpowering fiction, be alone obliged to renounce this general prerogative of our species? Voltaire wishes to derive the unity of place and time from the unity of action, but his conclusions are superficial in the extreme. "For the same reason," says he, "the unity of place is essential, because one action cannot go on in several places at the same time." But we have already seen that several persons necessarily take a part in one principal action, that it consists of a plurality of subordinate actions, and why should not these go on in different places? Is not the same war frequently carried on in Europe and India at the same time, and must not the historian equally recount the events which take place on both these scenes? It is merely calculated for a single point of view: seen from every other place, the broken lines betray the imperfection of the imitation. So little attention do the audience in general pay to these niceties, that they are not even shocked when the actors enter and disappear through a wall without a door between the side scenes. "The unity of time," he adds, "is naturally connected with the two first. When the poet represents to me a conspiracy, and the action includes fourteen days, he must account to me for all that has taken place in these fourteen days." Yes, for all that belongs to the business; the rest which lies between, he passes over in silence, like every good story-teller, and no person ever thinks of the omission. "When he therefore places before me the events of fourteeen days, this gives me at least fourteen different actions, however small they may be." No doubt, if the poet were to be so unskilful as to wind off the fourteen days one after another with visible precision, if we should see this exact number of revolutions of days and night, and if the characters were so many times to rise and go to bed. But he thrusts the periods, during which the action is imperceptible in its progress, into the back ground, annihilates in the composition the intervals during which it stands absolutely still, and contrives with a rapid pencil to give something like an accurate idea of the time which we must suppose to have elapsed between the divisions. Why is the privilege of adopting a much wider space between the two extremes of the piece than that of the actual duration of the representation, of importance, and even indispensable to many subjects? The example of conspiracy given by Voltaire comes here very opportunely. A conspiracy contrived and executed in two hours is, in the first place, not credible. Moreover, it is ethically, that is, with reference to the characters of the persons of the piece, very different from the idea of a conspiracy where the determination, however dangerous, must be preserved in and concealed for a considerable time. Although the poet does not exhibit this lapse of time immediately in the work, he allows us however to perceive it perspectively as in a glass, in the minds of the characters. In this kind of perspective Shakspeare is the greatest master whom I know: a single word frequently reveals an almost interminable series of preceding states of mind. The poet, confined within the narrow limits of time, will in many subjects be forced to mutilate the action, while he must begin quite close to the last determination, or be under the necessity of hurrying on its progress in a most unsuitable manner: on each supposition he must diminish the grand picture of a strong purpose, not a momentary effervescence, but a firm resolution maintained undauntedly, amidst every change of external circumstances, till the time is ripe for execution. It will no longer be what Shakspeare has so often painted, and what he has described in the following lines: Between the acting of a dreadful thing, But why are the Greek and romantic poets so different in their practice with respect to place and time? The spirit of our criticism will not allow us to follow the practice of many critics, who in a summary manner pronounce the latter barbarians. We conceive on the contrary that they lived in very cultivated times, and were themselves highly cultivated. The state of the ancient stage, as we have already said, led naturally to the apparent continuity of time and the immutability of the scene, and the observation of this custom was also favoured by the nature of the materials on which the Grecian dramatists had to work. These materials were mythology, and consequently they were already formed into fables; for the former poetic compositions had collected together, and united in constant and distinct masses, what in reality is detached and scattered about in every possible manner. Moreover, the heroic age which they painted was at once extremely simple in manners, and pregnant with wonderful events; and hence everything of itself went straight forward towards the aim of a tragical determination. But still the principal cause of the difference is the plastic spirit of the antique, and the picturesque spirit of the romantic poetry. Sculpture directs our attention exclusively to the group exhibited to us, it disentangles it as far as possible from all external accompaniments, and where they cannot be altogether dispensed with, they are indicated as lightly as possible. Painting, on the other hand, delights in exhibiting, in a minute manner, along with the principal figures, the surrounding locality and all the secondary objects, and to open to us in the back ground a prospect into a boundless distance: light and perspective are its peculiar charms. Hence the dramatic, and especially the tragic art of the ancients annihilates in some measure the external circumstances of space and time; while the romantic drama adorns by their changes its more diversified pictures. Or to express myself in other terms, the principle of the antique poetry is ideal, that of the romantic mystical: the former subjects space and time to the internal free-activity of the mind; the latter adores these inconceivable essences as supernatural powers, in whom something of the divinity has its abode. I come now to the influence which the above rules of unity, strictly interpreted and received as inviolable, along with other conventional rules, have had on the shape of French tragedy. With a state of the stage altogether different, with materials for the most part dissimilar, and handled in an opposite spirit, they were still desirous of retaining the rules of the ancient tragedy, in so far as they knew them from Aristotle. They prescribed the same simplicity of action as in the Grecian tragedy, and yet they left out the lyrical part, which is a protracted developement of the moment, and consequently a pause in the action. This part could not indeed be retained, as we no longer possess the ancient music, which was subservient to the poetry instead of governing it like ours. When we deduct from the Greek tragedies the choral odes, and the lyrical pieces which are often put into the mouths of individuals, they are nearly one half shorter than a common French tragedy. Voltaire complains frequently in his prefaces of the great difficulty of procuring materials for five long acts. How are the gaps arising from the leaving out of the lyrical parts now filled up? By intrigue. With the Greeks the action, which is calculated for a few great moments, rolls on without interruption to its determination; but instead of this the French have been obliged to introduce secondary characters, whose opposite views may give rise to a multitude of impending incidents, that our attention, or rather our curiosity, may be kept up to the close. Everything like simplicity was now therefore at an end; but they flattered themselves that they had preserved a unity for the understanding, by means of an artificial intrigue. Intrigue is not a tragical motive in itself; it is essential to the new comedy, as we have already shown. Comedy must often be satisfied with an obreptitious resting-place for the understanding, but this is by no means the poetical side of this demi-prosaic species of drama. Although the French tragedy endeavours in particular parts to rise as high as possible above comedy, by means of seriousness, dignity and pathos, it still, in my opinion, in its general structure and composition, bears but too much affinity to it. In many French tragedies I find only a unity for the understanding, while the feeling remains unsatisfied. From the complication of painful and violent situations we come at last, it is true, happily or unhappily, to a state of repose; but in the course of affairs exhibited to us there is no secret and mysterious revelation of a higher order of things; we find no allusion to the consolatory idea of heaven, in the display of the dignity of human nature, either in its conflicts with fate or with an over-ruling providence. To such a tranquillization of feeling poetical justice is partly unnecessary, and partly also, from the very ambiguous |