be interesting, the spectator can be beguiled into the belief that one day has passed over his head since he entered the theatre, and it would require very great artifice in the poet, or, indeed, would rather be quite in possible, on many occasions, to reduce the series of events into a shorter period. Perhaps some such rule as this might be necessary in the ancient drama,—in the course of which the stage was never allowed to be empty,--and the attention of the spectator was, accordingly, always brought back to the consideration of the time in which the performance took place. There would have been something, indeed, extremely absurd, had the Chorus been supposed to walk, and moralize, and sing from one end of the stage to another for the course of a year together, and even Shakespeare, I suppose, if he had had a chorus to manage, would not have been inconsiderate enough to lead them such a dance.

According to the system of the modern drama, greater licence in this particular may, I imagine, be safely taken, and, if an ancient audience with a chorus constantly in their eyes, could be seduced into the belief, that a few hours occupied the space of a day, I see no reason why we, before whom the action is so frequently suspended entirely, should not be led into a much greater delusion. The fact is, that the time of a drama is never at all attended to, unless the poet chooses to point it out by some circumstances which naturally call the attention of his audience to this object, and if he will make the divisions of time in the course of one day very striking and prominent, the absurdity of the supposition that they have been accomplished in the short period which is occupied in the representation of a drama, will strike the spectator as completely, as if a much longer time were expressed. If he will place a clock in the view of the audience, he must regulate his fable accordingly. The chorus was a kind of clock, and, accordingly, while it was fashionable, it was necessary to confine the time of the dramatic action within very narrow bounds. Since the clock has been removed, the spectator is left in all that inattention to the course of time which is natural to him. Through the course of every act, indeed, the poet ought to

exceed as little as possible the actual period of the representation. In an interesting scene, perhaps, some hours may be supposed to have passed away without any very bad effect,-at the same time, there must be attention paid, that no very distinct marks of the time should betray the deception; it would be improper, for instance, in the course of the same scene, to speak of the sun rising and the sun setting. Some time may be allowed to pass between the shifting of the scenes, but it would be proper, perhaps, to suspend the action, and make in fact a greater number of acts whenever any considerable portion of time is required to be slurred over on these occasions. When there is an entire suspension of the action, I do not see any bounds which I should put to the licence of the poet in this particular. Every act then seems to stand, as far as time is concerned, in the place of a distinct drama, and the poet may take it up at any point at which the chain of the fable will permit him.

It is quite impracticable in a modern drama to observe the strict unity of time, if our system of dividing the play into acts be retained, which supposes both a suspension of the action itself, and of the time, consequently, which the chain of events occupies. It is possible in our drama to preserve strictly the unity of place, but that is very useless, if the other cannot be preserved. When the course of the action, as in the ancient drama, was never suspended, it was absolutely impossible to shift the scene. What would have been more absurd, than, while the stage was never unoc cupied,-to have made any such alteration? When we see an actor on the stage, we suppose that he cannot get into any other place than that in which he is, unless he chooses to go to it,-30 that it would be perfectly absurd to change the scene in his presence. The utmost licence as to place, therefore, must be allowed in the modern drama, since the only reason why none was allowed in the ancient was the impossibility of the thing. It is strange enough, however, that some modern dramatists are extremely scrupulous as to this unity, while their adherence to the common practice of dividing the play into acts obliges them, in a certain degree, to deviate from the other. They are, in this

way, frequently led into very unnatural situations; and, by crowding every event into one place, they make the same scene very unusually fertile in striking occurrences. Dennis ridicules with some effect this particular in Mr Addison's Cato, all the events of which, though of a very different kind, take place in a large hall in Cato's house, and matters of the most secret and important nature are transacted in a place in which they were exposed to every accidental or designing intruder. Any farther question concerning these unities will involve the discussion, whether the system of the ancient or the modern drama be the more perfect.

I know the sticklers for antiquity will at once endeavour to put an end to the dispute, by maintaining that there is a gross absurdity in adopting any other system than that which prevails in the ancient drama. They will say, that, "to suspend the action after it has begun, is totally inconsistent with the dramatic effect, and that it is nothing else than to recal the minds of the spectators from the dream of reality into which they have been brought, and to give them occasion again and again to recollect that the whole representation is merely fictitious. It is the tenet of some philosophers, that the whole scene of creation is a mere picture which beguiles our senses; but, be it so or no, certainly the great Author of the drama of Nature at no time suspends that agency by which the notions of real existence are impressed upon our minds; and although, at times, in a philosophical humour, we may turn our eyes aside, and endeavour to be lieve that all is delusion and deception, yet the enchanted scene is ever before us, and constantly intrudes itself on our perceptions.'

Now, it will be maintained, that "the dramatist ought, in a similar manner, to carry on the impressions which he has begun; and that it is but a bungling kind of creation to give birth merely to a series of detached dreams, from which we are every moment awaking. You begin to interest us in certain events, and to make us look with impatience for their catastrophe. We have seen certain characters, and our sympathics have been strongly called out, and we have begun to have those fictitious person

ages bound to our hearts by the strong ties of humanity, and made in some sort to participate in the reality of our own existence-when all at once you break the talisman, and the fairy palaces crumble about our heads. The forms which we had begun to consider as brothers and fellow-creatures vanish from our eyes; the strong current of our affections is at once violently stopped; and, after doing us all this injury, you leave us to solace ourselves with the scraping and fiddling of the orchestra. It is in vain that you would afterwards make us amends by raising once more the works you have destroyed; we no longer give up our minds to your delusions; or, if we do, it is only that we may again meet with a similar return. Such are the disadvantages of suspending the course of the action by the modern invention of acts. We call it modern, because, though, in the ancient drama, the business of the play did not always proceed with equal impetuosity, and the songs and reflections of the chorus gave the spectators full opportunity to look back on the interesting occurrences which had passed, and to form awful conjectures concerning what should follow; though this kind of remission in the action very properly was admitted, yet certainly it was never entirely allowed to be suspended. The name acts was applied to the intermediate dialogue parts between the songs of the chorus, and, as the moderns have thought fit to retain these merely, and to throw out the chorus altogether, while, at the same time, they suspend the action entirely, which the chorus only had the effect of making a little less impetuous, they have materially altered the dramatic system. If they will not allow any chorus, they ought, at least, to adopt the spirit of the ancient drama rather than the form; and, if they think it fit to put away the odes which divided, and yet connected, the acts together, they ought to have no separation of acts at all. But it is plain that the dramatic system of the moderns is founded on a misapprehension of the ancient plan, and they have forgot the rule of Horace, that the chorus should always bear a character in the drama,-a rule which is exemplified in the best of the compositions for the ancient stage. They seem to have conceived, as some of the infe

rior dramatists of antiquity appear to have done, that the chorus, in fact, formed no part of the dramatis personce; and we fancy they imagined it was a very fine improvement to take them off the stage where they seemed to fill up an unnecessary portion of room, and to embarrass the performers, and they, no doubt, looked upon it as sufficiently good treatment for them if they put them in an orchestra below, with fiddles in their hands, with which they might amuse them selves and their audience during the division of the acts. We suppose our refined moderns conceived, that the usage of retaining the chorus on the stage was one of the barbarities which stuck to the ancient drama from its first appearance in Thespis's cart, in which actors and musicians would be obliged to huddle together the best way they could; and they thought certainly that it would be quite as becoming to paint the cheeks of their actors with the lees of wine, because the strolling company of Thespis had done so, as to allow the chorus or musicians to retain their place on the stage. From some such mistaken notion it was, that the ancient chorus was converted into a set of fiddlers, and that the modern drama is chopped and divided into so many detached bits and corners."

I am so much of a modern, however, I confess, that I have no very great taste for the ancient chorus considered in their active capacity, and though a finer entertainment might be substituted in their place than our modern orchestras, yet it appears to me, that the fine specimens of Lyric poetry which they have left behind them, are what recommend them chiefly to our admiration. Take the odes out of the Greek dramas, and string them together, and they will no doubt make a fine collection of odes, but the excellence of their effect in their native dramas, even I mean when they relate sufficiently to the subject of the drama, is to me by no means very apparent. For independent of the unnatural effect of singing when people are expected to speak, (an observation which has often been applied to the modern opera,) independently of this, I cannot help thinking, that the insertion of long pieces of poetry into the midst of animated and natural dialogue, had a

greater tendency to destroy the effect of the representation, than if it were suspended altogether. By the latter means, the mind, to be sure, does recover entirely from the dream with which it was fascinated, but it is quite in the humour for yielding instantly again to the spell when it is renewed. By the former method it is prevented from recovering entirely, but yet it must begin to doubt, and be kept in a disagreeable state, betwixt sleeping and waking; for let the ancient critics, and Horace among the rest, say what they please, I think it evident that the chorus must have occupied in the eyes of the spectators a situation somewhat different from the actual performers in the drama. Take them at the best, there is still a want of interest, and an indifference in their character, which is not at all suitable to the spectators of such scenes as they are witnesses to. The observation of the most violent cruelties, and the most unheard of misfortunes, has no other effect upon them, than to produce some exclamations of grief at the most, and generally nothing more than some moral reflections. They are represented, indeed, in general, as people of no power, and who are unable, by any effort, to change the torrent of fortune, yet it would be natural sometimes for them, in the violence of sympathy, to make some such attempt; or allowing them to act properly, yet we have no satisfaction in seeing persons introduced who are so insignificant in point of action. must therefore think that a kind of torpor is thrown over the whole play, by the use of a chorus; that the want of emotion which they display on many occasions is communicated to the spectator, and through the whole course of the exhibition, from the equivocal character which they hold in his eyes, he must often be kept in a state of doubt as to the reality of the whole representation.

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But besides this effect, which I conceive to be a general one, it appears to me that the chorus has a tendency to circumscribe very much the limits of the drama. Lay it down as a rule of art, that every play must have a chorus, who are to remain on the stage from the beginning to the end, how many scenes of secret passion must be withdrawn entirely from representation! Not to mention those

bursts of agony which nature prompts an unfortunate sufferer to vent when he has no witnesses to his conduct which the dignity of his character might prevent him from giving way to, when he is under the observation of a fellow-creature; not to mention these which constitute our modern soliloquies, and which form in Shakespeare, particularly, some of the finest passages in the play, how many exhibitions of passion are there, likewise, in which two or three people only may be concerned, and which it would be quite absurd to introduce to the observation of a multitude of gaping spectators! Secrecy, indeed, of some sort or other, is necessary for the full display of passion, and it is very seldom that persons of any dignity of character allow the intemperance of their passions to be displayed to the multitude. Were it not for this notorious fact in the human constitution, what need would there have been for the Devil Asmodeus to have pointed out to his disciple the retirement and secret actions of the citizens of Madrid? A dramatic poet should perform, in fact, the part of this amusing lame devil, and we scarcely thank him for the view of those representations, which pass in broad day, and before all the world.

The ancient poets, it is true, managed their department with great skill, and though the range of their representations was, from the reasons just stated, more limited than with us, yet they made the most of the narrow bounds within which they were confined. Although the scenes of distress and passion which they exhibited were necessarily of a public nature, yet they always laid hold of those fables into which some sudden and unexpected change of fortune was introduced, so that the leading person ages of the poem were taken at unawares, and off their guard, and might thus, without any violation of propriety, be supposed to express themselves, even in public, with great demonstrations of passion and emotion. But even thus, the passions they produced were all brought forward at the same point of excitation; and except in that high key, when it is not in human nature to resist the display of them, it was not in the power of an ancient dramatist to present them to his audience. I have no doubt that,

as public events occupied most of the attention, and excited the interest more than any other of the members of the ancient republics, that, therefore, such representations were, of all others, most suited to the taste of a Greek or a Roman audience.-But to us there is not, in any degree, an indiscriminate satisfaction in those public changes of fortune; and our poets are obliged to take upon themselves a much more difficult task, and to examine the appearances of passion in all its stages, as well in its first and most secret beginnings, as in the unrestrained fury of its full-grown strength.

I cannot, then, at all subscribe to the opinion that a chorus is by any means a part of the drama which ought, on all, or on most occasions, to be adopted. Whether or not, on some occasions, in the case, for instance, of public events, which we may naturally suppose will call together many eager spectators to witness their catastrophe,-whether something similar to the ancient chorus may not then have a good effect, I will not positively determine. I am in doubts about the musical part, and am afraid the odes of the chorus are at all times unnatural, (there may, however, even here, be exceptions,) but that a set of spectators interested in the events may be supposed to look eagerly on,

sometimes bear a part in the dialogue-and when the principal characters withdraw, make natural remarks on what they have seen and what they expect; that some such plan as this might occasionally be attended with a happy effect, I am rather inclined to believe. We should, perhaps, feel ourselves interested in a more lively way in the fortunes of the principal characters, if we saw men who were little more connected with them than ourselves, yet appearing to feel a lively interest in them, and expressing, in an apposite manner, what may naturally be the feelings of our own hearts. And if the unities be a matter of such importance, they might be preserved still, on some occasions, by this method.

But they appear to me to be circumstances of very little moment. I will not argue against them, by saying that, in fact, the deception of the theatre is very incomplete, and lays but a very feeble hold upon the mind.