In few words, my own opinion is this; and I willingly submit it to my adversary, when he will please impartially to consider it.  That the Imaginary Time of every Play ought to be contrived into as narrow a compass, as the nature of the Plot, the quality of the Persons, and variety of Accidents will allow.  In Comedy, I would not exceed twenty-four or thirty hours; for the Plot, Accidents, and Persons of Comedy are small, and may be naturally turned in a little compass.  But in Tragedy, the Design is weighty, and the Persons great; therefore there will, naturally, be required a greater space of time, in which to move them.

And this, though BEN.  JOHNSON has not told us, yet ’tis, manifestly, his opinion.  For you see, that, to his Comedies, he allows generally but twenty-four hours:  to his two Tragedies SEJANUS and CATILINE, a much larger time; though he draws both of them into as narrow a compass as he can.  For he shows you only the latter end of SEJANUS his favour; and the conspiracy of CATILINE already ripe, and just breaking out into action.

But as it is an error on the one side, to make too great a disproportion betwixt the imaginary time of the Play, and the real time of its representation:  so, on the other side, ’tis an oversight to compress the Accidents of a Play into a narrower compass than that in which they could naturally be produced.

Of this last error, the French are seldom guilty, because the thinness of their Plots prevents them from it:  but few Englishmen, except BEN.  JOHNSON, have ever made a Plot, with variety of Design in it, included in twenty-four hours; which was altogether natural.  For this reason, I prefer the Silent Woman before all other plays; I think, justly:  as I do its author, in judgement, above all other poets.  Yet of the two, I think that error the most pardonable, which, in too straight a compass, crowds together many accidents:  since it produces more variety, and consequently more pleasure to the audience; and because the nearness of proportion betwixt the imaginary and real time does speciously cover the compression of the Accidents.

Thus I have endeavoured to answer the meaning of his argument.  For, as he drew it, I humbly conceive, it was none.  As will appear by his Proposition, and the proof of it.  His Proposition was this, If strictly and duly weighed, ’tis as impossible for one Stage to present two Rooms or Houses, as two countries or kingdoms, &c.  And his Proof this, For all being impossible, they are none of them, nearest the Truth or Nature of what they present.

Here you see, instead of a Proof or Reason, there is only a petitio principii.  For, in plain words, his sense is this, “Two things are as impossible as one another:  because they are both equally impossible.”  But he takes those two things to be granted as impossible; which he ought to have proved such, before he had proceeded to prove them equally impossible.  He should have made out, first, that it was impossible for one Stage to represent two Houses; and then have gone forward, to prove that it was as equally impossible for a Stage to present two Houses, as two Countries.