Eugenius defends the English dramatists of the last age with a highly penetrating insight. It is true, that the ancient Greek and Roman scholars laid down many basic principles of drama.
1. The English authors gave due respect to them, but they adhered more to the rules of nature. The ancients had no clear-cut concept of dividing a play into acts.
2. The English dramatists set the vogue of dividing a play into five acts. Most of the ancient Greek playwrights wrote their plays on highly popular episodes of Thebes or Troy on which many narrative poems, epics and plays had already been written. Therefore the spectators found nothing new in them. Many times they spoke out the dialogues before the actors spoke them.
3. The English dramatists wrote their plays on new and interesting themes. In comedies the Greek as well as Roman playwrights repeated a common theme of lost children coming back to their parents as grown up gentleman and ladies after a gap of many years. The spectators lost their interest in this often repeated theme. The English dramatists invented new and interesting themes. So far as the dramatic unities are concerned even the Greek authors who gave their concept, did not always observe them. In the case of moral teaching too the ancients grossly erred. They often presented the wicked prospering and the virtuous suffering and languishing.
4. The English playwrights exhibited poetic justice whereby the virtuous won and the wicked lost in the end. In all these respects the English dramatists of the last age were better than the Greek or Roman dramatists.
****************************************
