These Seneca modified by the introduction of acts and scenes, a subordination of the Chorus, and an exaggerated predilection for long sententious speeches; he also added a new stage character known as the Ghost. Seneca's elevation, to the dogmatic position of laws, of the unities of Time, Place and Action, rules by no means invariable among his older and greater masters, has been the subject of much debate, but, on the whole, the verdict has been hostile. According to these unities, the time represented in the play should not greatly exceed the time occupied in acting it, the scene of the action should not vary, and the plot should be concerned only with one event. This last law was generally accepted, by Elizabethans, in Tragedy at least. The other two, though much insisted on by English theorists, such as Sir Philip Sidney, met with so much neglect in practice that we need devote no space to the discussion of them. Having thus hastily summarized the larger superficial characteristics of classical drama, we may return to _Gorboduc_ and inquire which of these were adopted in it and with what modifications. We find it divided into five acts and nine scenes. A Chorus, though it takes no other part, sings its moralizing lyrics at the end of each act except the last. Speeches of inordinate length are made--three consecutive speeches in Act I, Scene 2, occupy two hundred and sixty lines--the subject-matter being commonly argumentative. Only through the reports of messengers and eye-witnesses do we learn of the cold-blooded murder and many violent deaths that take place. Everywhere hurried action and unreasoning instinct give place to deliberation and debate. Between this play and its predecessors no change can be more sweeping or more abrupt. In an instant, as it were, we pass from the unpolished _Cambyses_, savage and reeking with blood, to the equally violent events of _Gorboduc_, cold beneath a formal restraint which, regulating their setting in the general framework, robs them of more than half their force. Had this severe discipline of the emotions been accepted as for ever binding upon the tragic stage Elizabethan drama would have been forgotten. The truth is that the germ of dissension was sown in _Gorboduc_ itself. Conscious that the banishment of action from the stage, while natural enough in Greece, must meet with an overwhelming resistance from the popular custom in England, the authors, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, invented a compromise. Before each act they provided a symbolical Dumb Show which, by its external position, infringed no classical law, yet satisfied the demand of an English audience for real deeds and melodramatic spectacles. It was an ingenious idea, the effect of which was to keep intact the close link between stage and action until the native genius should be strong enough to cast aside its swaddling clothes and follow its own bent without hurt. As illustrating this