“Now the Poet is to aim at one great and complete Action; to the carrying on of which, all things in the Play, even the very obstacles, are to be subservient.  And the reason of this, is as evident as any of the former.  For two Actions, equally laboured and driven on by the Writer, would destroy the Unity of the Poem.  It would be no longer one Play, but two.  Not but that there may be many actions in a Play (as BEN.  JOHNSON has observed in his Discoveries), but they must be all subservient to the great one; which our language happily expresses, in the name of Under Plots.  Such as, in TERENCE’s Eunuch, is the deference and reconcilement of THAIS and PHAEDRIA; which is not the chief business of the Play, but promotes the marriage of CHOEREA and CHREMES’s sister, principally intended by the Poet.

“‘There ought to be but one Action,’ says CORNEILLE, ’that is, one complete Action, which leaves the mind of the audience in a full repose.’  But this cannot be brought to pass, but by many other imperfect ones, which conduce to it, and hold the audience in a delightful suspense of what will be.

“If by these Rules (to omit many others drawn from the Precepts and Practice of the Ancients), we should judge our modern plays, ’tis probable that few of them would endure the trial.  That which should be the business of a Day, takes up, in some of them, an Age.  Instead of One Action, they are the Epitome of a man’s life.  And for one spot of ground, which the Stage should represent; we are sometimes in more countries than the map can show us.

“But if we will allow the Ancients to have contrived well; we must acknowledge them to have writ better.  Questionless, we are deprived of a great stock of wit, in the loss of MENANDER among the Greek poets, and of COECILIUS, AFFRANIUS, and VARIUS among the Romans.  We may guess of MENANDER’s excellency by the Plays of TERENCE; who translated some of his, and yet wanted so much of him, that he was called by C. CAESAR, the Half-MENANDER:  and of VARIUS, by the testimonies of HORACE, MARTIAL, and VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.  ’Tis probable that these, could they be recovered, would decide the controversy.

“But so long as ARISTOPHANES in the Old Comedy, and PLAUTUS in the New are extant; while the Tragedies of EURIPIDES, SOPHOCLES, and SENECA are to be had:  I can never see one of those Plays which are now written, but it increases my admiration of the Ancients.  And yet I must acknowledge further, that to admire them as we ought, we should understand them better than we do.  Doubtless, many things appear flat to us, whose wit depended upon some custom or story, which never came to our knowledge; or perhaps upon some criticism in their language, which, being so long dead, and only remaining in their books, it is not possible they should make us know it perfectly.

“To read MACROBIUS explaining the propriety and elegancy of many words in VIRGIL, which I had before passed over without consideration as common things, is enough to assure me that I ought to think the same of TERENCE; and that, in the purity of his style, which TULLY so much valued that he ever carried his Works about him, there is yet left in him great room for admiration, if I knew but where to place it.