he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation.
A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was
content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth.
A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world,
and was content to lose it.

It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this
writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities; his
violation of those laws which have been instituted and established by
the joint authority of poets and of criticks.

For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to
critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour, than
that which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his virtues be
rated with his failings: but, from the censure which this irregularity
may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to that learning which I
must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him.

His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to
any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which
they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be
understood; that the incidents be various and affecting, and the
characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other unity is intended,
and, therefore, none is to be sought.

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He
has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly
unravelled: he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover
it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the
poet of nature: but his plan has commonly what Aristotle requires, a
beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another,
and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are, perhaps, some
incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk
that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes
gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation.

To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard; and, perhaps, a
nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their
value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of
Corneille, they have generally received, by discovering that they have
given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor.

The necessity of observing the unities of time and