But I will be bolder, and do not doubt to make it good, though a
paradox, that one great reason why prose is not to be used in serious
plays, is, because it is too near the nature of converse: There may be
too great a likeness; as the most skilful painters affirm, that there
may be too near a resemblance in a picture: To take every lineament
and feature is not to make an excellent piece, but to take so much
only as will make a beautiful resemblance of the whole: and, with an
ingenious flattery of nature, to heighten the beauties of some parts,
and hide the deformities of the rest. For so says Horace,
_Ut pictura poesis erit. &c.--
Haec amat obscurum, vult haec sub luce videri,
Judicis argutum quae formidat acumen.
Et quae
Desperat tractata nitescere posse, relinquit._
In "Bartholomew Fair," or the lowest kind of comedy, that degree of
heightening is used, which is proper to set off that subject: It is
true the author was not there to go out of prose, as he does in his
higher arguments of comedy, "The Fox" and "Alchemist;" yet he does so
raise his matter in that prose, as to render it delightful; which
he could never have performed, had he only said or done those very
things, that are daily spoken or practised in the fair: for then the
fair itself would be as full of pleasure to an ingenious person as the
play, which we manifestly see it is not.
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