Dropping and cold, and their first fear scarce o'er, From that hard climate we must wait for bread, You are changed too, and your pretence to see Your own provisions furnish out our feasts, While you, the founders, make yourselves the guests. But for poor wit no portlon did prepare; 'Tis left a rent-charge to the brave and fair. Which blind unmannered zealots make their scorn, T Your presence here, for which we humbly sue, 30 PROLOGUE TO "ARVIRAGUS AND PHILICIA."S 1672. WITH sickly actors and an old house too, We're matched with glorious theatres and new ; || Field's Theatre was opened by the King's Company on February 26, 1672, the play acted being *From in "Covent Garden Drollery" version. Of in "Covent Garden Drollery" version. Compare in "Annus Mirabilis" stanza 212, "Great as the world's, which at the death of time Must fall and rise a nobler frame by fire." § "Arviragus and Philicia," a tragi-comedy by Lodovick Carlell, a court officer of Charles I. was originally produced in 1639, and it was revived at the Theatre Royal in 1672, with a Prologue by Dryden, spoken by Hart. It is to be inferred from the beginning of the Prologue that the play was produced in the old house in Lincoln's Inn Fields in which the King's Company took refuge after the fire at Drury Lane Theatre. This Prologue was printed in the first volume of the "Miscellany Poems," 1684. An allusion to the new and handsomely decorated Duke of York's Theatre in Dorset Gardens. In the " Prologue for the Women" Dryden calls it "the gaudy house with scenes ;" and again gay shows with gaudy scenes" are spoken of in the Prologue to "Marriage-a-la-Mode." If all these ills could not undo us quite, Bears all the charge, for them to understand : PROLOGUE FOR THE WOMEN, When they actea at the Old Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields.* 1672. WERE none of you, gallants, e'er driven so hard, Such is our case; we can't appoint our house, 5 The worse the lodging is, the more the love. For much good pastime, many a dear sweet hug * While the King's Company was in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1672, the actresses gave some representations by themselves; and this Prologue is supposed to have been furnished by Dryden for the first of such performances. The women acted Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster," and Killigrew's "Parson's Wedding." This Prologue was spoken by Mrs. Marshall. Dryden's play of "Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen," was also revived this year by the women-actors, with the Prologue and Epilogue which follow. This Prologue was printed in the first volume of the Miscellany Poems," 1684. The same rhyme occurs in "Hudibras" with the aggravation of the plural: "Convened at midnight in out-houses Part 3, canto 2, 183. And so the hot* Burgundian on the side The gaudy house with scenes will serve for cits. 15 20 PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO "THE MAIDEN QUEEN, OR SECRET LOVE," When acted by the Women only. 1672. PROLOGUE. Spoken by MRS. BOUTELL, in man's clothes. WOMEN like us passing for men, you'll cry, 5 10 And from your own cast wigs expect no frowns. They'll say, "What impudent bold things are these, "Like men, with huffing looks, that dare not fight!" 15 But this reproach our courage must not daunt; Hot with drinking Burgundy. Mr. R. Bell has wrongly turned coaches into couches. 20 This Prologue and Epilogue to Dryden's play of "The Maiden Queen, or Secret Love," revived and acted by the women in 1672, are taken from "Covent Garden Drollery." EPILOGUE. Spoken by MRS. REEVE, in man's clothes. Some who have tried them, if you'll take their oaths, And we could e'en give you as good content. EPILOGUE TC PROLOGUE AND "MARRIAGE-A-LA-MODE."+ 1672. PROLOGUE. LORD, how reformed and quiet are we grown, *This is a contemptuous reference to a play by E. Ravenscroft, called "The Citizen turned Gentleman, or Mamamouchi," adapted from Molière's "Bourgeois Gentilhomme. The citizen of the play is fooled into believing that the son of the Sultan of Turkey wishes to marry his daughter, and has given him the Turkish title of Mamamouchi. This play had been lately produced at the rival theatre in Dorset Gardens, and had great success; and Ravenscroft in the Prologue had made a contemptuous allusion to Dryden's "Conquest of Granada," and so provoked the poet's wrath. Dryden again ridiculed Mamamouchi in the Prologue to "The Assignation." Dryden's comedy of "Marriage-a-la-Mode" was produced in 1672, at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, while the King's Company was there. The play was very successful; it was Fop-corner now is free from civil war, The women sobbed, and swore they would be true; And they were made of playhouse flesh and blood. They can take up with pleasures nearer home; And see gay shows with ** gaudy scenes elsewhere; For we presume they seldom come to hear. But they have now taken up a glorious trade, 30 published in 1673. The Prologue and Epilogue were printed in "Covent Garden Drollery," so that the play must have first appeared in 1672. Some of the variations in the "Covent Garden Drollery version are adopted in this edition; others are obvious misprints. * Mask instead of make, which is the common reading of editors, has been adopted from the version in "Covent Garden Drollery," where the line is printed: "While wig and vizard masks no longer jar." The war in conjunction with France against the Dutch, which began in March 1672. 1 These two lines are omitted in Scott's and Bell's editions, and are supplied from the "Covent Garden Drollery" version. § Went instead of marched in "Covent Garden Drollery" version. Half-a-crown was the price of entrance to the pit. Roam is adopted from "Covent Garden Drollery" version, instead of come, which is in all modern editions. Mr. ** With from "Covent Garden Drollery" version, instead of and, the common reading, ++ In the Covent Garden Drollery" version it is "cunning Morecraft;" but as cutting appears in the Prologue as printed in early editions of the play, the word is preserved. Cutting means doing the dandy, like the "Cutter of Coleman Street." Morecraft was a rich city usurer. R. Bell says he was a hair-dresser, but this is probably a conjecture from the epithet cutting Morecraft is mentioned by Dryden in his Translation of the second Epode of Horace, and is clearly a money-lender: "Thus Morecraft said within himself: He called his money in: But the prevailing love of pelf He put it out again." [Oldham |