Sometimes an action on the stage is shown,
Sometimes ’tis done elsewhere, and there made known. 
A thing when heard, remember, strikes less keen
On the spectator’s mind than when ’tis seen. 
Yet ’twere not well in public to display
A business best transacted far away,
And much may be secluded from the eye
For well-graced tongues to tell of by and by. 
Medea must not shed her children’s blood,
Nor savage Atreus cook man’s flesh for food,
Nor Philomel turn bird or Cadmus snake,
With people looking on and wide awake. 
If scenes like these before my eyes be thrust,
They shock belief and generate disgust.

Would you your play should prosper and endure? 
Then let it have five acts, nor more nor fewer. 
Bring in no god save as a last resource,
Nor make four speakers join in the discourse.

An actor’s part the chorus should sustain
And do their best to get the plot in train: 
And whatsoe’er between the acts they chant
Should all be apt, appropriate, relevant. 
Still let them give sage counsel, back the good,
Attemper wrath, and cool impetuous blood,
Praise the spare meal that pleases but not sates,
Justice, and law, and peace with unbarred gates,
Conceal all secrets, and the gods implore
To crush the proud and elevate the poor.

Not trumpet-tongued, as now, nor brass-belayed,
The flute was used to lend the chorus aid: 
Simple and slight and moderately loud,
It charmed the ears of not too large a crowd,
Which, frugal, rustic, primitive, severe,
Flocked in those early days to see and hear.

Then, when the city gained increase of land,
And wider walls its waxing greatness spanned,
When the good Genius, frolicsome and gay,
Was soothed at festivals with cups by day,
Change spread to scenic measures:  breadth, and ease,
And freedom unrestrained were found in these: 
For what (said men) should jovial rustic, placed
At random ’mid his betters, know of taste?

So graceful dance went hand in hand with song,
And robes of kingly splendour trailed along: 
So by the side of music words upgrew,
And eloquence came rolling, prompt and new: 
Shrewd in things mundane, wise in things divine,
Its voice was like the voice of Delphi’s shrine.

The aspiring bard who served the tragic muse,
A paltry goat the summit of his views,
Soon brought in Satyrs from the woods, and tried
If grave and gay could nourish side by side,
That the spectator, feasted to his fill,
Noisy and drunk, might ne’ertheless sit still.

Yet, though loud laugh and frolic jest commend
Your Satyr folk, and mirth and morals blend,
Let not your heroes doff their robes of red
To talk low language in a homely shed,
Nor, in their fear of crawling, mount too high,
Catching at clouds and aiming at the sky. 
Melpomene, when bidden to be gay,
Like matron dancing on a festal day,
Deals not in idle banter, nor consorts
Without reserve with Satyrs and their sports.