"For the Second Unity, which is that of PLACE; the Ancients meant by it, _That the scene_ [locality] _ought to be continued_, through the Play, _in the same place, where it was laid in the beginning_. For _the Stage_, on which it is represented, _being but one, and the same place; it isunnatural to conceive it many, and those far distant from one another_. I will not deny but by the Variation of Painted scenes [_scenery was introduced about this time into the English theatres, by Sir WILLIAM D'AVENANT and BETTERTON the Actor: see Vol. II. p. 278_] the Fancy which, in these casts, will contribute to its own deceit, may sometimes imagine it several places, upon some appearance of probability: yet it still carries _the greater likelihood of truth_, if those places be supposed so near each other as in the same town or city, which may all be comprehended under the larger denomination of One Place; for a greater distance will bear no proportion to the _shortness of time which is allotted in the acting_, to pass from one of them to another. "For the observation of this; next to the Ancients, the French are most to be commended. They tie themselves so strictly to the Unity of Place, that you never see in any of their plays, a scene [_locality_] changed in the middle of an Act. If the Act begins in a garden, a street, or [a] chamber; 'tis ended in the same place. And that you may know it to be the same, the Stage is so supplied with persons, that it is never empty all the time. He that enters the second has business with him, who was on before; and before the second quits the stage, a third appears, who has business with him. This CORNEILLE calls _La Liaison des Scenes_,'the Continuity or Joining of the Scenes': and it is a good mark of a well contrived Play, when all the persons are known to each other, and every one of them has some affairs with all the rest. "As for the third Unity, which is that of ACTION, the Ancients meant no other by it, than what the Logicians do by their _Finis_; the End or Scope of any Action, that which is the First in intention, and Last in execution. "Now the Poet is to aim at _one great and complete Action_; to the carrying on of which, all things in the Play, even the very obstacles, are to be subservient. And the reason of this, is as evident as any of the former. For two Actions, equally laboured and driven on by the Writer, would destroy the Unity of the Poem. It would be no longer one Play, but two. Not but that there may be many actions in a Play (as BEN. JOHNSON has observed in his _Discoveries_), but they must be all subservient to the great one; which our language happily expresses, in the name of Under Plots. Such as, in TERENCE's _Eunuch_, is the deference and reconcilement of _THAIS_ and _PHAEDRIA_; which is not the chief business of the Play, but promotes the marriage of _CHOEREA_ and _CHREMES's sister_, principally intended by the Poet.