of course is, that the form differs, and ought to differ, just as much as the life does; so that both forms may be right, or at least equally so.  Formerly it was the custom to censure the Poet greatly, if not to condemn him utterly, because, in his dramatic workmanship, he did not observe what are called the Minor Unities, that is, the Unities of Time and Place.  The controversy indeed is now all out of date, and there need not a word be said by way of answering or refuting that old objection:  no interest attaches to the question, nor is it worth considering at all, save as it may yield light and illustration in the philosophy of Art, and in the general matter of art criticism.  On this account, it may be worth the while to look a little further into the reason of the difference in question.

I have already said that religion or religious culture has always been the originating and shaping spirit of Art.  There is no workmanship of Art in which this holds more true than in the English Drama.  Now the religious culture of Christian England was essentially different from that of Classic Greece; the two being of quite diverse and incommunicable natures; so that the spirit of the one could not possibly live in the dramatic form of the other.  In other words, the body of the Classic Drama was not big enough nor strong enough to contain the soul of Christian England.  The thing could no more be, except in a purely mechanical and arbitrary way, than an acorn could develop itself into a violet, or the life of an eagle build itself into the body of a trout, or the soul of a horse put on the organism of a dove.  Moreover the Greek religion was mythical or fabulous, and could nowise stand the historic method:  the Christian religion is historical both in origin and form; as such it has a natural sympathy and affinity with the historic method, the hardest facts being more in keeping with its spirit than the most beautiful and ingenious fables and myths.  Not indeed but that Christianity has its own ideal, or rather its sphere of ideality, and this in a much higher and purer kind than any mythology ever had; but its nature is to idealize from fact; its ideality is that of the waking reason and the ruling conscience, not that of the dreaming fancy and the dominating senses; and even in poetry its genius is to “build a princely throne on humble truth”:  it opens to man’s imaginative soul the largest possible scope,—­“Beauty, a living Presence, surpassing the most fair ideal forms which craft of delicate spirits hath composed from earth’s materials”; a world where imagination gathers fresh life and vigour from breathing the air of reason’s serenest sky, and where it builds the higher and nobler, that it rests on a deep and solid basis of humility, instead of “revolving restlessly” around its own airy and flitting centre.  The Shakespearian Drama works in the order and spirit of this principle; so that what the Poet creates is in effect historical, has the solidity and verisimilitude of Fact, and what he borrows has all the freedom and freshness of original creation.  Therewithal he often combines the two, or interchanges them freely, in the same work; where indeed they seem just as much at home together as if they were twins; or rather each is so attempered to the other, that the two are vitally continuous.