To those who object my frequent use of Drums and Trumpets; and my representations of Battels, I answer, I introduc'd them not on the English Stage, Shakespear us'd them frequently: and, though Jonson shows no Battel in his Catiline, yet you hear from behind the Scenes, the sounding of Trumpets, and the shouts of fighting Armies. But, I add farther; that these warlike Instruments, and, even the representations of fighting on the Stage, are no more than necessary to produce the effects of an Heroic Play, that is, to raise the imagination of the Audience, and to perswade them, for the time, that what they behold on the Theater is really perform'd. The Poet is, then, to endeavour an absolute dominion over the minds of the Spectators: for, though our fancy will contribute to its own deceipt, yet a Writer ought to help its operation.

[Dryden is defending his hero Almanzor; in what he says below he attributes to Cethegus some of Catiline's statements as well as those properly his.]

He talks extravagantly in his Passion: but, if I would take the pains to quote an hundred passages of Ben. Johnson's Cethegus, I could easily shew you that the Rhodomontades of Almanzor are neither so irrational as his, nor so impossible to be put in execution. For Cethegus threatens to destroy Nature, and to raise a new one out of it: to kill all the Senate for his part of the action; to look Cato dead; and a thousand other things as extravagant, he sayes, but performs not one Action in the Play.

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