Terence, in all his works, in compliance with the reigning taste of his age, observed the unities of _action_, _time_, and _place_, with the most scrupulous exactness: and this observance is the chief reason that his comedies can never succeed on any modern stage. His plays are crowded with narratives, which, however beautifully written, will never yield that attraction to an audience, which they find in busy and lively action. He cannot bring on the stage what is supposed to happen in the next street, or adjoining house, it must therefore be _related_. All the story of the piece _must_ be supposed to pass in a very few hours: all those events which cannot be imagined to take place in _one day_, and which, when represented to the spectators in the _modern drama_, are often of the greatest interest, must, by the law of the unity of time be _related_. Of what a scene, to instance one of _many_, has the unity of place robbed us in Terence’s Eunuch! where Laches (_Act 5_) rushes into the house of Thais. How many modern plays, in which the unities were preserved, ever kept the stage a month? None: if we except Ben Jonson’s “_Silent Woman_,” “_The Adventures of Five Hours_,” and a very few others; and it may well be doubted whether even our immortal SHAKSPEARE himself, if he had shackled his genius with these rules, would not have been generally confined to the closet. The practice of that great poet, and of most of the modern dramatists of all countries; who have observed _only_ (the rule of all stages, ancient and modern,) unity of action, is a tacit condemnation of the other two: and the fiat of Dr. Johnson speaks a yet plainer language. He has decided on the value of the unities in his preface to Shakspeare: and though what he has written respecting them is too long to be inserted here, the following extracts will not be unacceptable, as they shew the grounds on which it is assumed that dramatic writers ought, in general, to dispense with the unities of _time_ and _place_.