PROLOGUE TO THE KING AND QUEEN,
UPON THE UNION OF THE TWO COMPANIES IN 1682.
SINCE faction ebbs, and rogues grow out of fashion,
Their penny scribes take care to inform the nation,
How well men thrive in this or that plantation :
How Pensylvania's air agrees with Quakers,
And Carolina's with Associators:
Both e'en too good for madmen and for traitors.
Truth is, our land with saints is so run o'er,
every age produces such a store, That now there's need of two New Englands more.
What's this, you'll say, to us and our vocation?
Only thus much, that we have left our station,
And made this theatre our new plantation.
The factious natives never could agree;
But aiming, as they call'd it, to be free,
Those playhouse Whigs set up for property.
Some say, they no obedience paid of late;
But would new fears and jealousies create;
Till topsy-turvy they had turn'd the state.
Plain sense, without the talent of foretelling, Might guess 'twould end in downright knocks and quelling:
For seldom comes there better of rebelling.
When men will, needlessly, their freedom barter For lawless power, sometimes they catch a Tartar;
There's a damn'd word that rhymes to this, call'd Charter.
But, since the victory with us remains,
You shall be call'd to twelve in all our gains;
If you'll not think us saucy for our pains.
Old men shall have good old plays to delight 'em: And you, fair ladies and gallants, that slight 'em, We'll treat with good new plays: if our new wits can write 'em.
We'll take no blundering verse, no fustian tumour,
No dribbling love, from this or that presumer;
No dull fat fool shamm'd on the stage for humour.
For, faith, some of 'em such vile stuff have made,
As none but fools or fairies ever play'd;
But 'twas, as shopmen say, to force a trade.
We've given you Tragedies, all sense defying,
And singing men, in woful metre dying ;
This 'tis when heavy lubbers will be flying.
All these disasters we well hope to weather;
We bring you none of our old lumber hither:
Whig poets and Whig sheriffs may hang together.
PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
SPOKEN BY MR. HART, AT THE ACTING of the
SILENT WOMAN.
WHAT Greece, when learning flourish'd, only knew,
Athenian judges, you this day renew.
Here too are annual rites to Pallas done,
And here poetic prizes lost or won.
Methinks I see you, crown'd with olives, sit,
And strike a sacred horror from the pit.
A day of doom is this of your decree,
Where e'en the best are but by mercy free:
A day, which none but Jonson durst have wish'd
Here they, who long have known the useful stage,
Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.
As your
commissioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you sow;
In your Lyceum first themselves refin'd,
And delegated thence to humankind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come;
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
The illiterate writer, empiric-like, applies
To minds diseas'd, unsafe, chance, remedies: The learn'd in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause, And fame from science, not from fortune, draws. So Poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen 30
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order by some chance,
They call that nature, which is ignorance.
To such a fame let mere town-wits aspire,
And their gay nonsense their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those Prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the senate's hands,
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Muses' feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, resigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.
poor Dutch peasant, wing'd with all his fear, Flies with more haste, when the French arms
Than we with our poetic train come down,
For refuge hither, from the infected town:
Heaven for our sins this summer has thought fit
To visit us with all the plagues of wit.
A French troop first swept all things in its way;
But those hot Monsieurs were too quick to stay:
Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find
They left their itch of novelty behind.
The Italian merry-andrews took their place,
And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace:
Instead of wit, and humours, your delight
Was there to see two hobby-horses fight;
Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in,
And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin.
For love you heard how amorous asses bray'd,
And cats in gutters gave their serenade.
Nature was out of countenance, and each day
Some new-born monster shown you for a play. 20
But when all fail'd, to strike the stage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines call'd machines are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd,
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