"Many times, they fall, by it, into a greater inconvenience: for they keep their Scenes Unbroken; and yet Change the Place. As, in one of their newest Plays [_i.e., before 1665_]. Where the Act begins in a Street: there, a gentleman is to meet his friend; he sees him, with his man, coming out from his father's house; they talk together, and the first goes out. The second, who is a lover, has made an appointment with his mistress: she appears at the Window; and then, we are to imagine the Scene lies under it. This gentleman is called away, and leaves his servant with his mistress. Presently, her father is heard from within. The young lady is afraid the servingman should be discovered; and thrusts him through a door, which is supposed to be her Closet [_Boudoir_]. After this, the father enters to the daughter; and now the Scene is in a House: for he is seeking, from one room to another, for his poor _PHILIPIN_ or French _DIEGO_: who is heard from within, drolling, and breaking many a miserable conceit upon his sad condition. In this ridiculous manner, the Play goes on; the Stage being never empty all the while. So that the Street, the Window, the two Houses, and the Closet are made to walk about, and the Persons to stand still! "Now, what, I beseech you! is more easy than to write a regular French Play? or more difficult than to write an irregular English one, like those of FLETCHER, or of SHAKESPEARE? "If they content themselves, as CORNEILLE did, with some flat design, which (like an ill riddle) is found out ere it be half proposed; such Plots, we can make every way regular, as easily as they: but whene'er they endeavour to rise up to any quick Turns or Counter-turns of Plot, as some of them have attempted, since CORNEILLE's _Plays_ have been less in vogue; you see they write as irregularly as we! though they cover it more speciously. Hence the reason is perspicuous, why no French plays, when translated, have, or ever can succeed upon the English Stage. For, if you consider the Plots, our own are fuller of variety; if the Writing, ours are more quick, and fuller of spirit: and therefore 'tis a strange mistake in those who decry the way of writing Plays in Verse; as if the English therein imitated the French.