Leontion. Epicurus! although it would be very interesting, no doubt, to hear more of what you do after dinner—[Aside to him.] now don’t smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a single word—yet I would rather hear a little about the theatre, and whether you think at last that women should frequent it; for you have often said the contrary.
Epicurus. I think they should visit it rarely; not because it excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me nothing is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and among the heroes, and, while I am receiving into my heart the most exquisite of human sensations, to feel upon my shoulder the hand of some inattentive and insensible young officer.
Leontion. Oh, very bad indeed! horrible!
Ternissa. You quite fire at the idea.
Leontion. Not I: I don’t care about it.
Ternissa. Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible?
Leontion. I seldom go thither.
Epicurus. The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our own house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.
Leontion. You must lose the illusion in great part, if you only read the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.
Epicurus. I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two imitations: first, the poet’s of the sufferer; secondly, the actor’s of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and willingly, and are at least as much illuded by it as by anything else we hear or see upon the stage. Poets and statuaries and painters give us an adorned imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion they aim at: this is the perfection of their arts.