Page images
PDF
EPUB

[7]

Adieu, my dear father, and believe me attached to you and yours by that tender regard which I owe you, and which thofe 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 seen to this day with fome 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 fubject, and both avoided the errors which I had fallen into. It is not my business to criticife their performances, my cenfures and my praises 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 those refined reasonings, so often reiterated, are scarce worth one fingle scene of genius;

* Monf. de la Motte prefented the world with two Oedipus's, one in verfe, the other in profe, in the year 1726: that in verse was played four times; the profe was never reprefented at all. See La Motte's works, duodecimo. vol. ii. and iii.

and

[ocr errors]

and that we may learn more from † Cinna and Poly우 eucte, than from all the precepts of ‡ D'Aubignac. Severus and Paulinus are true mafters of the art. All

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 reafon. 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 useless, 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 demonftration, that his compofitions must be sure to please.

But fince Monf. de la Motte feems defirous of eftablishing rules, directly oppofite to those which our

+ Cinna and Polyeucte, two tragedies by Corneille.

La Pratique du Theatre, par l'Abbé D'Aubignac, a very · judicious and fenfible performance.

[blocks in formation]

great masters submitted to, it is but just to defend the antient laws; not because they are ancient, but because 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 refused for a long time fubmiffion to a yoke, which they thought too fevere; but as the laws were juft, and reafon must triumph at last, in process 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, such as Lopez de Vega and Shakespeare; they acknowledge their obligation to us for awakening them from this gothicism; and fhall a Frenchman after this exercise all his wit and abilities to reduce us once more to the same standard?

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 sufficient 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 seeing two different events even in a picture; it is, in fhort, because nature alone points out to us this precept, which is as invariable as herself.

For the fame reafon unity of place is effential; for a fingle action cannot poffibly happen in several places at a time: if the perfons of the drama are at Athens in the first act, how can they be at Persia in the second? Did Le Brun paint Alexander at Arbele and the Indies on the fame canvas? "I fhould not be in the • least surprized,' (fays M. de la Motte, with all the fmartness imaginable) to fee a fenfible people, not fond of rules, reconcile themselves to the reprefen

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]
« EelmineJätka »