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In the first chapter is explained the pleasure we have in a chain of connected facts. In histories of the world, of a country, of a people, this pleasure is faint, because the connexions are slight. We find more entertainment in biography; because the incidents are connected by their relation to a person who makes a figure, and commands our attention. But the greatest entertainment is in the history of a single event, supposing it interesting; because the facts and circumstances are connected by the strongest of all relations, that of cause and effect: a number of facts that give birth to each other form a delightful train; and we have great mental enjoyment in our progress from beginning to end.

When we consider the chain of causes and effects in the material world, independent of purpose, design, or thought, we find incidents in succession, without beginning, middle, or end: every thing that happens is both a cause and an effect; being the effect of what goes before, and the cause of what follows: one incident may affect us more, another less; but all of them are links in the chain: the mind, in viewing these incidents, cannot rest ultimately upon any one, but is carried along in the train without any close.

But when the intellectual world is taken under view, in conjunction with the material, the scene is varied. Man acts with deliberation and choice: he aims at some end, glory, for example, or riches, or conquest, the procuring happiness to individuals, or to his country in general: he proposes means, and lays plans to attain the end purposed. Here are a number of facts or incidents leading to the end, and composing one chain by the relation of cause and effect. In running over a series of such facts, we cannot rest upon any

one; because they are presented to us as means only, leading to some end: but we rest with satisfaction upon the ultimate event; because there the purpose of the chief person is accomplished. This indicates the beginning, the middle, and the end of what Aristotle calls an entire action. The story begins with describing those circumstances which move the principal person to form a plan, to compass some desired event: the prosecution of that plan, and the obstructions, carry the reader into the heat of action: the middle is properly where the action is the most involved; and the end is where the event is brought about, and the plan accomplished.

A plan thus happily accomplished after many obstructions, affords delight to the reader; to produce which, a principle mentioned above mainly contributes, the same that disposes the mind to complete every work commenced, and in general to carry every thing to a conclusion.

The foregoing example of a plan crowned with success, affords the clearest conception of a beginning, middle, and end, in which consists unity of action; and stricter unity cannot be imagined. But an action may have unity, or a beginning, middle, and end, without so intimate a relation of parts; as where the catastrophe is different from what is intended or desired, which frequently happens in our best tragedies. In the Eneid, the hero, after many obstructions, makes his plan effectual. The Iliad is formed upon a different model: it begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon; goes on to describe the several effects produced by that cause; and ends in a reconciliation. Here is unity of action, no doubt, a beginning, a middle, and an end; but inferior to that of the Eneid, which will thus appear. The mind has a propensity to go forward in the chain of history: it keeps always in view the expected event; and when the under parts are connected by their relation to the event, the mind runs sweetly and easily along them.

This pleasure we have in the Eneid. It is not so pleasant, as in the Iliad, to connect effects by their common cause; for such connexion forces the mind to a continual retrospect: looking back is like walking backward.

Homer's plan is still more defective; the events described are but imperfectly connected with the wrath of Achilles, their cause: his wrath did not exert itself in action; and the misfortunes of his countrymen were but negatively the effects of his wrath, by depriving them of his assistance.

If unity of action be a capital beauty in a fable imitative of human affairs, a plurality of unconnected fables must be a capital deformity. For the sake of variety, we indulge an under-plot that is connected with the principal; but two unconnected events are extremely unpleasant, even where the same actors are engaged in both. Ariosto is quite licentious in that particular: he carries on at the same time a plurality of unconnected stories. His only excuse is, that his plan is perfectly well adjusted to his subject; for every thing in the Orlando Furioso is wild and extravagant.

Though to state facts in the order of time is natural, that order may be varied, for the sake of conspicuous beauties. If a noted story, cold and simple in its first movements, be made the subject of an epic poem, the reader may be hurried into the heat of action, reserving the preliminaries for a conversation piece, if necessary; and that method has a peculiar beauty from being dramatic. But a privilege that deviates from nature ought to be sparingly indulged; and yet romance writers make no difficulty of presenting to the reader, without preparation, unknown persons engaged in some arduous adventure equally unknown. In Cassandra, two personages, who afterwards are discovered to be the heroes of the fable, start up completely armed upon the banks of the Euphrates, and engage in a single combat.

A play analyzed, is a chain of connected facts, of

which each scene makes a link. Each scene, accordingly, ought to produce some incident relative to the catastrophe or ultimate event, by advancing or retarding it. A scene that produceth no incident, and for that reason may be termed barren, ought not to be indulged, because it breaks the unity of action: a barren scene can never be entitled to a place, because the chain is complete without it. How successfully is this done by Shakspeare! in whose works there is not to be found a single barren scene.

All the facts in an historical fable ought to have a mutual connexion, by their common relation to the grand event or catastrophe; and this relation, in which the unity of action consists, is equally essential to epic and dramatic compositions.

The mind is satisfied with slighter unity in a picture than in a poem; because the perceptions of the former are more lively than the ideas of the latter. In Hogarth's Enraged Musician, we have a collection of every grating sound in nature, without any mutual connexion except that of place. But the horror they give to the delicate ear of an Italian fiddler, who is represented almost in convulsions, bestows unity upon the piece, with which the mind is satisfied.

How far the unities of time and of place are essential, is a question of greater intricacy. These unities. were observed in the Greek and Roman theatres; and they are inculcated by the French and some English critics, as essential to every dramatic composition.

The unities of place and time are not, by the most rigid critics, required in a narrative poem: because, if it pretend to copy nature, these unities would be absurd; real events are seldom confined within narrow limits either of place or of time. And yet we can follow history, or an historical fable, through all its changes, with the greatest facility: we never once think of measuring the real time by what is taken in

reading; nor of forming any connexion between the place of action and that which we occupy.

The drama differs so far from the epic, as to admit different rules. "An historical fable, intended for reading solely, is under no limitation of time nor of place, more than a genuine history; but that a dramatic composition cannot be accurately represented, unless it be limited, as its representation is, to one place and to a few hours; and therefore that it can admit no fable but what has these properties; because it would be absurd to compose a piece for representation that cannot be justly represented." This argument has at least a plausible appearance; and yet one is apt to suspect some fallacy, considering that no critic, however strict, has ventured to confine the unities of place and of time within so narrow bounds.

A view of the Grecian drama, compared with our own, may perhaps relieve us from this dilemma: if they be differently constructed, as shall be made evident, it is possible that the foregoing reasoning may not be equally applicable to both. This is an article that, with relation to the present subject, has not been examined by any writer.

All authors agree, that tragedy in Greece was derived from the hymns in praise of Bacchus, which were sung in parts of a chorus. Thespis, to relieve the singers, introduced one actor; whose province it was to explain the subject of the song, and who represented one or other personage. Eschylus, introducing a second actor, formed the dialogue, by which the performance became dramatic; the actors were multiplied when the subject represented made it necessary. But still, the chorus, which gave a beginning to tragedy, was considered as an essential part. The first scene, generally, unfolds the preliminary circumstances that lead to the grand event; and this scene is by Aristotle termed the prologue. In the second scene, where the action properly begins, the chorus is introduced, which

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