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Page 6
It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy
sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he
struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises
it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and
evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.
Not that always where the language is intricate the thought
is subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the
equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial
sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they
are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures.
But the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to
indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully
resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender
emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the
crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some
idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to
move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they
are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity.
A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the
traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him
out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some
malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible.
Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his 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.
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