own "Marriage A-la-mode," where there
are manifestly two actions, not depending on one another; but in
"OEdipus" there cannot properly be said to be two actions, because the
love of Adrastus and Eurydice has a necessary dependence on the
principal design into which it is woven. The natural reason of this
rule is plain; for two different independent actions distract the
attention and concernment of the audience, and consequently destroy
the intention of the poet; if his business be to move terror and pity,
and one of his actions he comical, the other tragical, the former will
divert the people, and utterly make void his greater purpose.
Therefore, as in perspective, so in tragedy, there must be a point of
sight in which all the lines terminate; otherwise the eye wanders, and
the work is false. This was the practice of the Grecian stage. But
Terence made an innovation in the Roman: all his plays have double
actions; for it was his custom to translate two Greek comedies, and to
weave them into one of his, yet so, that both their actions were
comical, and one was principal, the other but secondary or
subservient. And this has obtained on the English stage, to give us
the pleasure of variety.

As the action ought to be one, it ought, as such, to have order in it;
that is, to have a natural beginning, a middle, and an end. A natural
beginning, says Aristotle, is that which could not necessarily have
been placed after another thing; and so of the rest. This
consideration will arraign all plays after the new model of Spanish
plots, where accident is heaped upon accident, and that which is first
might as reasonably be last; an inconvenience not to be remedied, but
by making one accident naturally produce another, otherwise it is a
farce and not a play. Of this nature is the "Slighted Maid;" where
there is no scene in the first act, which might not by as good reason
be in the fifth. And if the action ought to be one, the tragedy ought
likewise to conclude with the action of it. Thus in "Mustapha," the
play should naturally have ended with the death of Zanger, and not
have given us the grace-cup after dinner, of Solyman's divorce from
Roxolana.

The following properties of the action are so easy, that they need not
my explaining. It ought to be great, and to consist of great persons,
to distinguish it from comedy, where the action is trivial, and the
persons of inferior rank. The last quality of the action is, that it
ought to