Editing Theatre technique (section)

===The three unities===
The ''[[Classical unities]]'' of time, action and place were the main principles of French [[neoclassicism|neo-classical]] [[drama]] during part of the 17th century.<br>They were introduced by [[Jean Mairet]] after a misreading of [[Aristotle]]'s ''Poetics'', and the critic [[Lodovico Castelvetro|Castelvetro]] insisted that playwrights and directors adhere to the unities. In the ''Poetics'' Aristotle had merely  recommended that action should consist only of the main [[Plot (narrative)|plot]] without any [[subplot]]s, and that the time represented by action should not stretch beyond the length of one day. Time merely entered into his recommendations as a hint as to the limits of the [[attention]] span the audience could be expected to have. The unity of place, that of the confinement of the action in a play to one locality only, was not mentioned at all.<br>The effect of the three unities on French drama during this period was that their presentation became very restrictive, and it was only when later dramatists began to avoid mentioning specific times and places that the presentation of plays became more creative again.