Rules and unities must be ; anything rather than
violate them ; anything, even subterfuge, trickerv, or
falsehood. As far back as 1639 changes of scene in a
tragedy seemed to most people unsufFerable ; Claveret
risked some in his " Proserpine," but in fear and
trembling. Fear is an evil counsellor, and this is
what it induced him to say : " The scene takes place
in Heaven, in Sicily and in Hades, where the imagi-
nation of the reader can represent to itself a certain
unity of place, by conceiving them as on a perpendicular
line drawn from Heaven to Hades." >

Zealous to combine example and precept, d'Aubignac
writes a " Maid of Orleans, tragedy in prose in
accordance with historic truth and dramatic rules." 2
He crams in as many difficulties as he can, and
he enumerates them complacently ; he exacerbates at
the same time the asperitv of rules ; the example will,
he thinks, be all the better, and the triumph all the
greater : "As the [dramatic] poem, is able to present
to the spectators' eyes onlv what has taken place in
eight hours, or at most in half a dav, the plot can
only be grounded on one of the most capital events :
and as they have happened [with Joan of Arc] in divers
times and places, and as I cannot take the liberty or
advancing the times or confounding the places, the

finest actions must of necessity be merely told." Then
there is another difficulty, unforeseen by Aristotle :
" Add also that the Maid was tried by the bishops of
Beauvais, Bayeux, and other ecclesiastics and doctors,
a thing which cannot be suffered on the stage."