“This Rule of TIME, how well it has been observed by the Ancients, most of their plays will witness.  You see them, in their Tragedies (wherein to follow this Rule is certainly most difficult), from the very beginning of their Plays, falling close into that part of the Story, which they intend for the Action or principal Object of it:  leaving the former part to be delivered by Narration.  So that they set the audience, as it were, at the post where the race is to be concluded:  and, saving them the tedious expectation of seeing the Poet set out and ride the beginning of the course; you behold him not, till he is in sight of the goal, and just upon you.

“For the Second Unity, which is that of PLACE; the Ancients meant by it, That the scene [locality] ought to be continued, through the Play, in the same place, where it was laid in the beginning.  For the Stage, on which it is represented, being but one, and the same place; it isunnatural to conceive it many, and those far distant from one another.  I will not deny but by the Variation of Painted scenes [scenery was introduced about this time into the English theatres, by Sir WILLIAM D’AVENANT and BETTERTON the Actor:  see Vol.  II. p. 278] the Fancy which, in these casts, will contribute to its own deceit, may sometimes imagine it several places, upon some appearance of probability:  yet it still carries the greater likelihood of truth, if those places be supposed so near each other as in the same town or city, which may all be comprehended under the larger denomination of One Place; for a greater distance will bear no proportion to the shortness of time which is allotted in the acting, to pass from one of them to another.

“For the observation of this; next to the Ancients, the French are most to be commended.  They tie themselves so strictly to the Unity of Place, that you never see in any of their plays, a scene [locality] changed in the middle of an Act.  If the Act begins in a garden, a street, or [a] chamber; ’tis ended in the same place.  And that you may know it to be the same, the Stage is so supplied with persons, that it is never empty all the time.  He that enters the second has business with him, who was on before; and before the second quits the stage, a third appears, who has business with him.  This CORNEILLE calls La Liaison des Scenes,’the Continuity or Joining of the Scenes’:  and it is a good mark of a well contrived Play, when all the persons are known to each other, and every one of them has some affairs with all the rest.

“As for the third Unity, which is that of ACTION, the Ancients meant no other by it, than what the Logicians do by their Finis; the End or Scope of any Action, that which is the First in intention, and Last in execution.