"And, by the same Rule which concludes this General Proportion of Time, it follows, _That all the parts of it are to be equally subdivided_. As, namely, that one Act take not up the supposed time of Half a day, which is out of proportion to the rest; since the other four are then to be straitened within the compass of the remaining half: for it is unnatural that one Act which, being spoken or written, is not longer than the rest; should be supposed longer by the audience. 'Tis therefore the Poet's duty to take care _that no Act_ should be imagined to _exceed the Time in which it is Represented on the Stage_; and that the intervals and inequalities of time, be supposed to fall out _between_ the Acts. "This Rule of TIME, how well it has been observed by the Ancients, most of their plays will witness. You see them, in their Tragedies (wherein to follow this Rule is certainly most difficult), from the very beginning of their Plays, falling close into that part of the Story, which they intend for the Action or principal Object of it: leaving the former part to be delivered by Narration. So that they set the audience, as it were, at the post where the race is to be concluded: and, saving them the tedious expectation of seeing the Poet set out and ride the beginning of the course; you behold him not, till he is in sight of the goal, and just upon you. "For the Second Unity, which is that of PLACE; the Ancients meant by it, _That the scene_ [locality] _ought to be continued_, through the Play, _in the same place, where it was laid in the beginning_. For _the Stage_, on which it is represented, _being but one, and the same place; it isunnatural to conceive it many, and those far distant from one another_. I will not deny but by the Variation of Painted scenes [_scenery was introduced about this time into the English theatres, by Sir WILLIAM D'AVENANT and BETTERTON the Actor: see Vol. II. p. 278_] the Fancy which, in these casts, will contribute to its own deceit, may sometimes imagine it several places, upon some appearance of probability: yet it still carries _the greater likelihood of truth_, if those places be supposed so near each other as in the same town or city, which may all be comprehended under the larger denomination of One Place; for a greater distance will bear no proportion to the _shortness of time which is allotted in the acting_, to pass from one of them to another. "For the observation of this; next to the Ancients, the French are most to be commended. They tie themselves so strictly to the Unity of Place, that you never see in any of their plays, a scene [_locality_] changed in the middle of an Act. If the Act begins in a garden, a street, or [a] chamber; 'tis ended in the same place. And that you may know it to be the same, the Stage is so supplied with persons, that it is never empty all the time. He that enters the second has business with him, who was on before; and before the second quits the stage, a third appears, who has business with him. This CORNEILLE calls _La Liaison des Scenes_,'the Continuity or Joining of the Scenes': and it is a good mark of a well contrived Play, when all the persons are known to each other, and every one of them has some affairs with all the rest.