tlemen, strange news to tell ye, I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly. Sweet ladies, be not frighted, I'll be civil; I'm what I was, a little harmless devil: For after death, we sprites have just such natures

We had for all the world, when human creatures;

And therefore I that was an actress here, Play all my tricks in hell, a goblin there. 10 Gallants, look to 't, you say there are no sprites;

But I'll come dance about your beds at nights.

And faith you'll be in a sweet kind of taking, When I surprise you between sleep and waking.

To tell you true, I walk because I die
Out of my calling in a tragedy.

O poet, damn'd dull poet, who could prove
So senseless! to make Nelly die for love!
Nay, what's yet worse, to kill me in the
prime

Of Easter term, in tart and cheese-cake time!

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PROLOGUES, EPILOGUES, AND SONGS FROM THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA BY THE SPANIARDS

[This, Dryden's most famous heroic play, is divided into two parts, which seem to have been presented on successive days. It was first acted at some time between May 8, 1670, when a son was born to Nell Gwyn, the chief actress in the play, and February 20, 1671, when it was entered on the Stationers' Register (Malone, I, 1, 94). The first edition is dated 1672. The second song is printed also in Westminster Drollery; or, a Choice Collection of the Newest Songs and Poems, 1671, under the title, A Song at the King's House (the Theater Royal). The first song is twice printed in the same collection, once under the title, A Vision, and once under the same title as the other song.]

PROLOGUE

TO THE FIRST PART

SPOKEN BY

MRS. ELLEN GWYN

IN A BROAD-BRIMM'D HAT, AND WAIST-BELT THIS jest was first of t'other house's making, And, five times tried, has never fail'd of

taking;

If they, thro' sickness, seldom did appear, Pity the virgins of each theater:

29

For, at both houses, 't was a sickly year! And pity us, your servants, to whose cost, In one such sickness, nine whole months are lost.

Their stay, he fears, has ruin'd what he writ:

Long waiting both disables love and wit. They thought they gave him leisure to do well;

But, when they forc'd him to attend, he fell!

Yet, tho' he much has fail'd, he begs, to-day, You will excuse his unperforming play: Weakness sometimes great passion does

PROLOGUE SPOKEN THE FIRST DAY OF THE KING'S HOUSE ACTING AFTER THE FIRE

[The Theater Royal in Drury Lane was burnt on January 25, 1672. (See FitzGerald: A New History of the English Stage, 1882; vol. i, p. 137.) The King's Company in their distress moved to the old playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which had recently been vacated by their rivals, the Duke of York's Company, in favor of a new and gaudy theater in Dorset Gardens; on February 26 they gave a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit without Money, for which Dryden wrote this prologue (Malone, I, 1, 76). The piece is printed anonymously in Westminster Drollery, the Second Part, 1672, and in Covent Garden Drollery, 1672; and, with Dryden's name, in Miscellany Poems, 1684, from which the present text and heading are taken.]

So shipwrack'd passengers escape to land, So look they, when on the bare beach they stand

Dropping and cold, and their first fear scarce o'er,

Expecting famine on a desart shore.

From that hard climate we must wait for