Adieu, my dear father, and believe me attached to you and yours by that tender regard which I owe you, and which those who were educated by you do not always retain. Paris, Jan. 7th, 1729. PREFACE. PREFACE. HE Oedipus, now. re-printed, was reprefented for the first time at the end of the TH year 1718, and received with great indulgence by the public, it has even fince that time fupported itself on the stage, and is feen to this day with some pleasure, in fpite of all its faults; a circumftance which I attribute partly to its advantage of being always well acted, and partly to the pomp and folemnity of the fpectacle, together with fome intrinfic merit in the piece. P. Folard, the jefuit, and Mr. de la Motte,* of the French academy, have both of them fince treated the fame subject, and both avoided the errors which I had fallen into. It is not my business to criticise their performances, my cenfures and my praifes would be equally liable to fufpicion: ftill further is my intention from pretending to lay down rules for writing tragedy. I am perfuaded, that all thofe refined reafonings, fo often reiterated, are scarce worth one fingle scene of genius ; * Monf. de la Motte prefented the world with two Oedipus's, one in veife, the other in profe, in the year 1726: that in verfe was played four times; the prose was never represented at all. See La Motte's works, duodecimo. vol. ii. and iii. and and that we may learn more from † Cinna and Polyeucte, than from all the precepts of D'Aubignac. Severus and Paulinus are true mafters of the art. Ail the books on painting, which were ever written by the greatest connoiffeurs, would not give a young painter half the inftruction as only the fight of a head by Raphael. The principles of all the arts that depend on the imagination are eafy and fimple, all drawn from nature and from reason. Our Pradons and Boyers knew them as well as our Corneille's and Racine's; the only difference was, and always will be, in their application of them. The worst compofers had the fame rules of mufic before them, as the authors of Armida and Iffe. Pouffin worked upon the fame principles as Vignon. 'Tis as ufelefs, therefore, to talk of rules in a preface to a tragedy, as it would be to a painter to endeavour to prejudice the public in his favour, by a differtation on his pictures; or to a musician, to prove by demonstration, that his compofitions must be fure to please. But fince Monf. de la Motte feems defirous of cftablishing rules, directly oppofite to thofe which our + Cinna and Polyeucte, two tragedies by Corneille. La Pratique du Theatre, par l'Abbé D'Aubignac, a very judicious and fenfible performance. great mafters fubmitted to, it is but just to defend the antient laws; not because they are ancient, but becaufe they are good and neceffary, and because those laws might find a very powerful adversary in a man of his distinguished merit. OF THE THREE UNITIES. Mr. de la Motte would abolish the unities of action, time, and place. The French were the firft of the moderns, who revived the wife rules of the antient theatre: other nations refufed for a long time fubmiffion to a yoke, which they thought too fevere; but as the laws were just, and reason must triumph at last, in procefs of time they yielded alfo. Even in England, at this day, authors give us notice at the beginning of their pieces, that the time employed in the action is equal to that of the representation, and thus go further than ourselves who taught them. All nations now begin to look upon thofe ages as barbarous, when this practice was entirely unknown to the greatest geniuffes, fuch as Lopez de Vega and Shakespeare ; they acknowledge their obligation to us for awakening them from this gothicifm; and fhall a Frenchman after this exercife all his wit and abilities to reduce us once more to the fame ftandard? Had Had I nothing more to offer in oppofition to Mr. de la Motte, than that Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Addifon, Congreve, and Maffei, have all obferved the rules of the theatre, it would be fufficient to prevent the violation of them; but a man of fuch fuperior understanding as M. de la Motte has a right to expect that we should oppose him rather by reason than by authority. What is a theatrical performance? The reprefentation of an action. Why of a fingle action, and not of two or three? Doubtlefs, because the human mind is incapable of embracing more than one object at a time; because the intereft, which is divided, is foon destroyed; because we are difgufted at fecing two different events even in a picture; it is, in fhort, because nature alone points out to us this is as invariable as herself. precept, which For the fame reafon unity of place is effential; for a fingle action cannot poffibly happen in feveral places at a time: if the perfons of the drama are at Athens in the first act, how can they be at Perfia in the fecond? Did Le Brun paint Alexander at Arbele and the Indies on the fame canvas? I fhould not be in the leaft furprized,' (fays M. de la Motte, with all the fmartnefs imaginable) to fee a fenfible people, not fond of rules, reconcile themfelves to the reprefentation B 5 |