Surely he that imagines this may imagine more.

He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the _Ptolemies_, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of _Actium_.

Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are _Alexander_ and _Caesar_, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of _Pharsalia_, or the bank of _Granicus_, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature.

There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in extacy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field.
The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.

They came to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation.