As for example, I may speak, though I
am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from that to the description
of Calicut; but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet's
horse. And so was the manner the ancients took by some "Nuntius,"
{85} to recount things done in former time, or other place.
Lastly, if they will represent an history, they must not, as Horace
saith, begin "ab ovo," {86} but they must come to the principal
point of that one action which they will represent. By example this
will be best expressed; I have a story of young Polydorus,
delivered, for safety's sake, with great riches, by his father
Priamus to Polymnestor, King of Thrace, in the Trojan war time. He,
after some years, hearing of the overthrow of Priamus, for to make
the treasure his own, murdereth the child; the body of the child is
taken up; Hecuba, she, the same day, findeth a sleight to be
revenged most cruelly of the tyrant. Where, now, would one of our
tragedy-writers begin, but with the delivery of the child? Then
should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I know not how many
years, and travel numbers of places. But where doth Euripides?
Even with the finding of the body; leaving the rest to be told by
the spirit of Polydorus. This needs no farther to be enlarged; the
dullest wit may conceive it.
But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither
right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not
because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head
and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither
decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and
commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel
tragi-comedy obtained.
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