This ground-work the history afforded me, and I desire no better to
build a play upon; for where the event of a great action is left
doubtful, there the poet is left master. He may raise what he pleases
on that foundation, provided he makes it of a piece, and according to
the rule of probability. From hence I was only obliged, that Sebastian
should return to Portugal no more; but at the same time I had him at
my own disposal, whether to bestow him in Afric, or in any other
corner of the world, or to have closed the tragedy with his death; and
the last of these was certainly the most easy, but for the same reason
the least artful; because, as I have somewhere said, the poison and
the dagger are still at hand to butcher a hero, when a poet wants the
brains to save him. It being therefore only necessary, according to
the laws of the drama, that Sebastian should no more be seen upon the
throne, I leave it for the world to judge, whether or no I have
disposed of him according to art, or have bungled up the conclusion of
his adventure. In the drawing of his character, I forgot not piety,
which any one may observe to be one principal ingredient of it, even
so far as to be a habit in him; though I shew him once to be
transported from it by the violence of a sudden passion, to endeavour
a self-murder. This being presupposed, that he was religious, the
horror of his incest, though innocently committed, was the best reason
which the stage could give for hindering his return.
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