...rules of the Greek stage should not be thus glaringly set at naught. But if time, as Johnson says, " is of all modes of existence most obsequious to the...years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours." Writing two years later in defence of Shakespeare, and in opposition to the French school, Lessing...

...years ; but Dr. Johnson, sometimes the most liberal of critics, boldly meets the difficulty : — " Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious...imagination , a lapse of years is as easily conceived as The geographical blunder of the play is this — that Bohemia is described as having a seacoast In...

...that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus, that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions;...action that happened years after the first, if it be so con- 10 nected with it that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of...

...that ITS neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive imaginations of successive actions, and why may not the second imitation represent an action that iso happened years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed...

...palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. . . . The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions,...that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene ? His argument ought to have been enough entirely to destroy the slavish regard for the unities, already...

...into believing fiction instead of truth. If, then, we grant something to the exigencies of the drama, time is of all modes of existence most obsequious to the imagination, and we may conceive of a lapse of years as easily as of a passage of hours. Likewise, the different...

...us. _The drama exhibits suc-^| A cessive imitations of successive actions ; and why may fj not_fEe second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it^that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious...

...Johnson revised the word antiquity, so in his discussion of time, he similarly reconsiders the term: "Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious...years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours" (YJ 7:78). Critics who have faulted Shakespeare for abusing the unity of time present themselves as...

...enjoyment and intellectual benefit that may be gotten from a dramatic performance. As Johnson puts it, "Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious...years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours." The Romantic reaction against "neoclassical" rules, beginning in the latter part of the eighteenth...

...no narration: even Dr Johnson (no instinctive Sternean) remarks in his 'Preface to Shakespeare' that 'time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination' (Johnson, 1963: 502); and Sterne as we know exacts the fullest measure of temporal obsequiousness,...