Our tragedies and comedies, (not without cause cried out against,)
observing rules neither of honest civility nor of skilful poetry,
excepting _Gorboduc_, (again, I say, of those that I have seen,) which
notwithstanding as it is full of stately speeches, and well-sounding
phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of
notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain
the very end of poesy: yet in truth it is very defectious in the
circumstances; which grieveth me, because it might not remain as an
exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty both in place and time,
the two necessary companions of all corporal actions. For where the
stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time
presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and common
reason, but one day: there is both many days, and many places,
inartificially imagined. But if it be so in _Gorboduc_, how much more
in all the rest? where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa
of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when
he cometh in, must ever begin with telling where he is: or else, the
tale will not be conceived.
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