“Grief and Passion are like floods raised in little brooks, by a sudden rain.  They are quickly up; and if the Concernment be poured unexpectedly in upon us, it overflows us:  but a long sober shower gives them leisure to run out as they came in, without troubling the ordinary current.

“As for Comedy, Repartee is one of its chiefest graces.  The greatest pleasure of the audience is a Chase of Wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed.  And this, our forefathers (if not we) have had, in FLETCHER’s Plays, to a much higher degree of perfection, than the French Poets can arrive at.

“There is another part of LISIDEIUS his discourse, in which he has rather excused our neighbours, than commended them; that is, for aiming only [simply] to make one person considerable in their Plays.

“’Tis very true what he has urged, that one Character in all Plays, even without the Poet’s care, will have the advantage of all the others; and that the Design of the whole Drama will chiefly depend on it.  But this hinders not, that there may be more shining Characters in the Play; many persons of a second magnitude, nay, some so very near, so almost equal to the first, that greatness may be opposed to greatness:  and all the persons be made considerable, not only by their Quality, but their Action.

“’Tis evident that the more the persons are; the greater will be the variety of the Plot.  If then, the parts are managed so regularly, that the beauty of the whole be kept entire; and that the variety become not a perplexed and confused mass of accidents:  you will find it infinitely pleasing, to be led in a labyrinth of Design; where you see some of your way before you, yet discern not the end, till you arrive at it.

“And that all this is practicable; I can produce, for examples, many of our English plays, as the Maid’s Tragedy, the Alchemist, the Silent Woman.

“I was going to have named the Fox; but that the Unity of Design seems not exactly observed in it.  For there appear two Actions in the Play; the first naturally ending with the Fourth Act, the second forced from it, in the Fifth.  Which yet, is the less to be condemned in him, because the disguise of VOLPONE (though, it suited not with his character as a crafty or covetous person) agreed well enough with that of a voluptuary:  and, by it, the Poet gained the end he aimed at, the punishment of vice, and reward of virtue; which that disguise produced.  So that, to judge equally of it, it was an excellent Fifth Act; but not so naturally proceeding from the former.