“I answer.  Some parts of the Action are more fit to be Represented; some, to be Related.  CORNEILLE says judiciously, ’That the Poet is not obliged to expose to view all particular actions, which conduce to the principal.  He ought to select such of them to be Seen, which will appear with the greatest beauty, either by the magnificence of the shew, or the vehemence of the passions which they produce, or some other charm which they have in them:  and let the rest arrive to the audience, by Narration.’

“’Tis a great mistake in us, to believe the French present no part of the Action upon the Stage.  Every alteration, or crossing of a Design; every new sprung passion, and turn of it, is a part of the Action, and much the noblest:  except we conceive nothing to be Action, till they come to blows; as if the painting of the Hero’s Mind were not more properly the Poet’s work, than, the strength of his Body.

“Nor does this anything contradict the opinion of HORACE, where he tells us

    “Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem
    Quam quae sunt occulis subjecta fidelibus.

“For he says, immediately after,

    “Non tamen intus
    Digna, geri promes in scenam, Multaque tolles
    Ex occulis, quae mox narret facundia praesens.

“Among which ‘many,’ he recounts some,

    “Nec pueros coram populo MEDEA trucidet,
    Aut in avem PROGNE mutetur, CADMUS in anguem, &c.

“that is, ’Those actions, which, by reason of their cruelty, will cause aversion in us; or (by reason of their impossibility) unbelief [pp. 496, 545], ought either wholly to be avoided by a Poet, or only delivered by Narration.’  To which, we may have leave to add, such as ’to avoid tumult,’ as was before hinted [pp. 535, 544]; or ’to reduce the Plot into a more reasonable compass of time,’ or ‘for defect of beauty in them,’ are rather to be Related than presented to the eye.

“Examples of all these kinds, are frequent; not only among all the Ancients, but in the best received of our English poets.

“We find BEN.  JOHNSON using them in his Magnetic Lady, where one comes out from dinner, and Relates the quarrels and disorders of it; to save the indecent appearing of them on the Stage, and to abbreviate the story:  and this, in express imitation of TERENCE, who had done the same before him, in his Eunuch; where PYTHIAS makes the like Relation of what had happened within, at the soldiers’ entertainment.

“The Relations, likewise, of SEFANUS’s death and the prodigies before it, are remarkable.  The one of which, was hid from sight, to avoid the horror and tumult of the Representation:  the other, to shun the introducing of things impossible to be believed.

“In that excellent Play, the King and no King, FLETCHER goes yet farther.  For the whole unravelling of the Plot is done by Narration in the Fifth Act, after the manner of the Ancients:  and it moves great concernment in the audience; though it be only a Relation of what was done many years before the Play.