eir 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 in the theatre, than on 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 to pass,
and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken by the
auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may
pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire.

Whether _Shakespeare_ knew the unities, and rejected them by design,
or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible
to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that,
when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions
of scholars and criticks, and t