Many have imagined the character of Philocles to
be faulty; some for not discovering the queen's love, others for his
joining in her restraint: But though I am not of their number, who
obstinately defend what they have once said, I may, with modesty, take
up those answers which have been made for me by my friends; namely,
that Philocles, who was but a gentleman of ordinary birth, had no
reason to guess so soon at the queen's passion; she being a person
so much above him, and, by the suffrages of all her people, already
destined to Lysimantes: Besides, that he was prepossessed (as the
queen somewhere hints it to him) with another inclination, which
rendered him less clear-sighted in it, since no man, at the same time,
can distinctly view two different objects; and if this, with any
shew of reason, may be defended, I leave my masters, the critics, to
determine, whether it be not much more conducing to the beauty of my
plot, that Philocles should be long kept ignorant of the queen's love,
than that with one leap he should have entered into the knowledge of
it, and thereby freed himself, to the disgust of the audience, from
that pleasing labyrinth of errors which was prepared for him. As for
that other objection, of his joining in the queen's imprisonment, it
is indisputably that which every man, if he examines himself, would
have done on the like occasion.
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