a Play, which is, _to resemble truth_.

"As for _Death_, that _it ought not to be represented_ [p. 536]: I have,
besides the arguments alleged by LISIDEIUS, the authority of BEN.
JOHNSON, who has foreborne it in his Tragedies: for both the death of
SEJANUS and CATILINE are Related. Though, in the latter, I cannot but
observe one irregularity of that great poet. He has removed the Scene in
the same Act, from Rome to _CATILINE_'s army; and from thence, again to
Rome: and, besides, has allowed a very inconsiderable time after
_CATILINE_'s speech, for the striking of the battle, and the return of
_PETREIUS_, who is to relate the event of it to the Senate. Which I
should not animadvert upon him, who was otherwise a painful observer of
[Greek: to prepon] or the Decorum of the Stage: if he had not used
extreme severity in his judgement [_in his 'Discoveries'_] upon the
incomparable SHAKESPEARE, for the same fault.

"To conclude on this subject of Relations, if we are to be blamed for
showing too much of the Action; the French are as faulty for discovering
too little of it. A mean betwixt both, should be observed by every
judicious writer, so as the audience may neither be left unsatisfied, by
not seeing what is beautiful; or shocked, by beholding what is either
incredible or indecent.

"I hope I have already proved in this discourse, that though we are not
altogether so punctual as the French, in observing the laws of Comedy:
yet our errors are so few, and [so] little; and those things wherein we
excel them so considerable, that we ought, of right, to be preferred
before them.

"But what will LISIDEIUS say? if they themselves acknowledge they are too
strictly tied up by those laws: for the breaking which, he has blamed the
English? I will allege CORNEILLE's words, as I find them in the end of
this _Discourse_ of _The three Unities_. _Il est facile aux speculatifs
d'etre severe, &c_. ''Tis easy, for speculative people to judge severely:
but if they would produce to public view, ten or twelve pieces of this
nature; they would, perhaps, give more latitude to the Rules, than I have
done: when, by experience, they had known how much we are bound up, and
constrained by them, and how many beauties of the Stage they banished
from it.'

"To illustrate, a little, what he has said. By their servile imitations
of the UNITIES of TIME and PLACE, and INTEGRITY OF SCENES they have
brought upon themselves the Dearth of Plot and Narrownes