Now ye shall have three ladies walk to
gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By
and by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are
to blame, if we accept it not for a rock.
Upon the back of that, comes out a hideous monster, with fire and
smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a
cave. While in the meantime, two armies fly in, represented with four
swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for
a pitched field? Now, of time they are much more liberal, for ordinary
it is that two young princes fall in love. After many traverses, she
is got with child, delivered of a fair boy, he is lost, groweth a man,
falls in love, and is ready to get another child, and all this in two
hours' space: which how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine,
and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified: and at this
day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in. Yet will some bring
in an example of _Eunuchus_ in Terence, that containeth matter of two
days, yet far short of twenty years.
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