prehend as much of it, as I can, in few words; that my Answer to it,
may be more perspicuous.

I conceive his meaning to be what follows, as to the Unity of PLACE. If I
mistake, I beg his pardon! professing it is not out of any design to play
the _argumentative Poet_. "If one Stage cannot properly present two Rooms
or Houses, much less two Countries or Kingdoms; then there can be no Unity
of Place: but one Stage cannot properly perform this; therefore, there can
be no Unity of Place."

I plainly deny his Minor Proposition: the force of which if I mistake
not, depends on this; that "the Stage being one place, cannot be two."
This, indeed, is as great a secret as that, "we are all mortal." But, to
requite it with another, I must crave leave to tell him, that "though the
Stage cannot be two places, yet it may properly Represent them,
successively or at several times."

His argument is, indeed, no more than a mere fallacy: which will
evidently appear, when we distinguished Place as it relates to Plays,
into Real and Imaginary. The Real place is that theatre or piece of
ground, on which the Play is acted. The 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 [_scenery_], nay _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