Chorus have but thirty-six verses; which[1] is not for every mile a verse.
'The like error is as evident in Terence his Eunuch, when Laches, the old man, enters by mistake into the house[2] of Thais; where, betwixt his exit and the entrance of Pythias, who comes to give ample relation of the disorders[3] he has raised within, Parmeno, who was left upon the stage, has not above five lines to speak. C'est bien employer[4] un temps si court, says the French poet, who furnished me with one of the observations: and almost all their tragedies will afford us examples of the like nature.
'It is true[5], they have kept the continuity, or, as you called it, liaison des scenes, somewhat better: two do not perpetually come in together, talk, and go out together; and other two succeed them, and do the same throughout the act, which the English call by the name of single scenes; but the reason is, because they have seldom above two or three scenes, properly so called, in every act; for it is to be accounted a new scene, not only every time[6] the stage is empty; but every person who enters, though to others, makes it so; because he introduces a new business. Now the plots of their plays being narrow, and the persons few, one of their acts was written in a less compass than one of our well-wrought scenes; and yet they are often deficient even in this. To go no further than Terence; you find in the Eunuch, Antipho entering single in the midst
