imaginary, that house, town, or country where the action of the drama
is supposed to be, or, more plainly, where the scene of the play is
laid. Let us now apply this to that Herculean argument, "which if
strictly and duly weighed, is to make it evident, that there is no
such thing as what they all pretend." 'Tis impossible, he says, for
one stage to present two rooms or houses: I answer, 'tis neither
impossible, nor improper, for one real place to represent two or more
imaginary places, so it be done successively; which, in other words,
is no more than this, that the imagination of the audience, aided by
the words of the poet, and painted scenes, may suppose the stage to
be sometimes one place, sometimes another; now a garden, or wood, and
immediately a camp: which I appeal to every man's imagination, if it
be not true. Neither the ancients nor moderns, as much fools as he is
pleased to think them, ever asserted that they could make one place
two; but they might hope, by the good leave of this author, that the
change of a scene might lead the imagination to suppose the place
altered: so that he cannot fasten those absurdities upon this scene
of a play, or imaginary place of action, that it is one place, and yet
two. And this being so clearly proved, that 'tis past any shew of a
reasonable denial, it will not be hard to destroy that other part of
his argument, which depends upon it, namely, that 'tis as impossible
for a stage to represent two rooms or houses, as two countries or
kingdoms: for his reason is already overthrown, which was, because
both were alike impossible. This is manifestly otherwise; for 'tis
proved that a stage may properly represent two rooms or houses; for
the imagination being judge of what is represented, will in reason be
less choked with the appearance of two rooms in the same house, or
two houses in the same city, than with two distant cities in the same
country, or two remote countries in the same universe. Imagination in
a man, or reasonable creature, is supposed to participate of reason,
and when that governs, as it does in the belief of fiction, reason
is not destroyed, but misled, or blinded; that can prescribe to the
reason, during the time of the representation, somewhat like a weak
belief of what it sees and hears; and reason suffers itself to be so
hood-winked, that it may better enjoy the pleasures of the fiction:
But it is never so wholly made a captive, as to be drawn headlong into
a