in my whiskers in poring over it, to preserve those rules
and precepts already mentioned, I might fare at last like
the sagacious botcher, who sewed for nothing and found his
customers in thread.

It is not a sufficient excuse to say that the object in
permitting theatrical exhibitions being chiefly to provide
innocent recreation for the people, it is unnecessary to
limit and restrain the dramatic author within strict rules
of composition; for I affirm that the same object is, beyond
all comparison, more effectually attained by legitimate
works. The spectator of a good drama is amused, admonished,
and improved by what is diverting, affecting, and moral in
the representation; he is cautioned against deceit,
corrected by example, incensed against vice, stimulated to
the love of virtue.

Comedy, according to Tully, ought to be the mirror of life,
the exemplar of manners, and picture of truth; whereas those
that are represented in this age are mirrors of absurdity,
exemplars of folly, and pictures of lewdness; for sure,
nothing can be more absurd in a dramatic performance, than
to see the person, who, in the first scene of the first
act, was produced a child in swaddling-clothes, appear a
full-grown man with a beard in the second; or to represent
an old man active and valiant, a young soldier cowardly, a
footman eloquent, a page a counsellor, a king a porter, and
a princess a scullion. Then what shall we say concerning
their management of the time and place in which the actions
have, or may be supposed to have happened? I have seen a
comedy, the first act of which was laid in Europe, the
second in Asia, and the third was finished in Africa; nay,
had there been a fourth, the scene would have shifted to
America, so that the fable would have travelled through all
the four divisions of the globe. If imitation be the chief
aim of comedy, how can any ordinary understanding be
satisfied with seeing an action that passed in the time of
King Pepin and Charlemagne, ascribed to the Emperor
Heraclius, who, being the principal personage, is
represented, like Godfrey of Boulogne, carrying the cross
into Jerusalem, and making himself master of the holy
sepulchre, an infinite number of years having passed between
the one and the other? Or, when a comedy is founded upon
fiction, to see scraps of real history introduced, and facts
misrepresented both