“But in how strait a compass sorever, they have bounded their Plots and Characters, we will pass it by, if they have regularly pursued them, and perfectly observed those three Unities, of TIME, PLACE, and ACTION; the knowledge of which, you say! is derived to us from them.

“But, in the first place, give me leave to tell you! that the Unity of PLACE, however it might be practised by them, was never any of their Rules.  We neither find it in ARISTOTLE, HORACE, or any who have written of it; till, in our Age, the French poets first made it a Precept of the Stage.

“The Unity of TIME, even TERENCE himself, who was the best and most regular of them, has neglected.  His Heautontimoroumenos or ’Self Punisher’ takes up, visibly, two days.  ‘Therefore,’ says SCALIGER, ’the two first Acts concluding the first day, were acted overnight; the last three on the ensuing day.’

“And EURIPIDES, in tying himself to one day, has committed an absurdity never to be forgiven him.  For, in one of his Tragedies, he has made THESEUS go from Athens to Thebes, which was about forty English miles; under the walls of it, to give battle; and appear victorious in the next Act:  and yet, from the time of his departure, to the return of the Nuntius, who gives relation of his victory; AETHRA and the Chorus have but thirty-six verses, that is, not for every mile, a verse.

“The like error is evident in TERENCE his Eunuch; when LACHES the old man, enters, in a mistake, the house of THAIS; where, between his Exit and the Entrance of PYTHIAS (who comes to give an ample relation of the garboils he has raised within), PARMENO who was left upon the stage, has not above five lines to speak. C’est bien employe, un temps si court! says the French poet, who furnished me with one of the[se] observations.

“And almost all their Tragedies will afford us examples of the like nature.

“’Tis true, they have kept the Continuity, or as you called it, Liaison des Scenes, somewhat better.  Two do not perpetually come in together, talk, and go out together; and other two succeeded them, and do the same, throughout the Act:  which the English call by the name of ‘Single Scenes.’  But the reason is, because they have seldom above two or three Scenes, properly so called, in every Act.  For it is to be accounted a new Scene, not every time the Stage is empty:  but every person who enters, though to others, makes it so; because he introduces a new business.

“Now the Plots of their Plays being narrow, and the persons few:  one of their Acts was written in a less compass than one of our well-wrought Scenes; and yet they are often deficient even in this.