can there be
than putting before us an old man as a swashbuckler, a young man as a
poltroon, a lackey using fine language, a page giving sage advice, a king
plying as a porter, a princess who is a kitchen-maid? And then what shall
I say of their attention to the time in which the action they represent
may or can take place, save that I have seen a play where the first act
began in Europe, the second in Asia, the third finished in Africa, and no
doubt, had it been in four acts, the fourth would have ended in America,
and so it would have been laid in all four quarters of the globe? And if
truth to life is the main thing the drama should keep in view, how is it
possible for any average understanding to be satisfied when the action is
supposed to pass in the time of King Pepin or Charlemagne, and the
principal personage in it they represent to be the Emperor Heraclius who
entered Jerusalem with the cross and won the Holy Sepulchre, like Godfrey
of Bouillon, there being years innumerable between the one and the other?
or, if the play is based on fiction and historical facts are introduced,
or bits of what occurred to different people and at different times mixed
up with it, all, not only without any semblance of probability, but with
obvious errors that from every point of view are inexcusable? And the
worst of it is, there are ignorant people who say that this is
perfection, and that anything beyond this is affected refinement. And
then if we turn to sacred dramas--what miracles they invent in them! What
apocryphal, ill-devised incidents, attributing to one saint the miracles
of another! And even in secular plays they venture to introduce miracles
without any reason or object except that they think some such miracle, or
transformation as they call it, will come in well to astonish stupid
people and draw them to the play. All this tends to the prejudice of the
truth and the corruption of history, nay more, to the reproach of the
wits of Spain; for foreigners who scrupulously observe the laws of the
drama look upon us as barbarous and ignorant, when they see the absurdity
and nonsense of the plays we produce. Nor will it be a sufficient excuse
to say that the chief object well-ordered governments have in view when
they permit plays to be performed in public is to entertain the people
with some harmless amusement occasionally, and keep it from those evil
humours which idleness is apt to engender; and that, as this may be
attai