Prologue to The Tempest, as it
    is alter’d by Mr. Dryden.

It is the same Magick that raises the Fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghost in Hamlet, with Thoughts and Language so proper to the Parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the Talent of this Writer.  But of the two last of these Plays I shall have occasion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. Shakespear.  If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those Rules which are establish’d by Aristotle, and taken from the Model of the Grecian Stage, it would be no very hard Task to find a great many Faults:  But as Shakespear liv’d under a kind of mere Light of Nature, and had never been made acquainted with the Regularity of those written Precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a Law he knew nothing of.  We are to consider him as a Man that liv’d in a State of almost universal License and Ignorance:  There was no establish’d Judge, but every one took the liberty to Write according to the Dictates of his own Fancy.  When one considers, that there is not one Play before him of a Reputation good enough to entitle it to an Appearance on the present Stage, it cannot but be a Matter of great Wonder that he should advance Dramatick Poetry so far as he did.  The Fable is what is generally plac’d the first, among those that are reckon’d the constituent Parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most Difficult or Beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the Contrivance and Course of the whole; and with the Fable ought to be consider’d, the fit Disposition, Order and Conduct of its several Parts.  As it is not in this Province of the Drama that the Strength and Mastery of Shakespear lay, so I shall not undertake the tedious and ill-natur’d Trouble to point out the several Faults he was guilty of in it.  His Tales were seldom invented, but rather taken either from true History, or Novels and Romances:  And he commonly made use of ’em in that Order, with those Incidents, and that extent of Time in which he found ’em in the Authors from whence he borrow’d them.  So The Winter’s Tale, which is taken from an old Book, call’d, The Delectable History of Dorastus and Faunia, contains the space of sixteen or seventeen Years, and the Scene is sometimes laid in Bohemia, and sometimes in Sicily, according to the original Order of the Story.  Almost all his Historical Plays comprehend a great length of Time, and very different and distinct Places:  And in his Antony and Cleopatra, the Scene travels over the greatest Part of the Roman Empire.  But in Recompence for his Carelessness in this Point, when he comes to another Part of the Drama, The Manners of his Characters, in Acting or Speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be shown by the Poet, he may be generally justify’d,