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XXXII.

EPILOGUE TO THE SAME.

A QUALM of conscience brings me back again,
To make amends to you bespatter'd men.
We women love like cats, that hide their joys,
By growling, squalling, and a hideous noise.
I rail'd at wild young sparks; but, without lying,
Never was man worse thought on for high-flying.
The prodigal of love gives each her part,
And squandering shows, at least, a noble heart.
I've heard of men, who, in some lewd lampoon,
Have hir'd a friend, to make their valour known.
That accusation straight this question brings;
What is the man that does such naughty things?
The spaniel lover, like a sneaking fop,
Lies at our feet: he's scarce worth taking up.
'Tis true, such heroes in a play go far;
But chamber-practice is not like the bar.
When men such vile, such faint, petitions make,
We fear to give, because they fear to take;
Since modesty's the virtue of our kind,
Pray let it be to our own sex confin'd.
When men usurp it from the female nation,
'Tis but a work of supererogation-
We show'd a princess in the play, 'tis true,
Who gave her Cæsar more than all his due;
Told her own faults: but I should much abhor
To choose a husband for my confessor.
You see what fate follow'd the saint-like fool,
For telling tales from out the nuptial school.

Our play a merry comedy had prov'd,
Had she confess'd so much to him she lov'd.
True presbyterian wives the means would try;
But damn'd confessing is flat popery.

XXXIII.

PROLOGUE

TO THE WIDOW RANTER,

[BY MRS. BEHN, 1690.]

HEAVEN Save you, gallants, and this hopeful age;
Ye 're welcome to the downfall of the stage:
The fools have labour'd long in their vocation;
And vice, the manufacture of the nation,
O'erstocks the town so much, and thrives so well,
That fops and knaves grow drugs, and will not sell.
In vain our wares on theatres are shown,
When each has a plantation of his own.
His cause ne'er fails; for whatsoe'er he spends,
There's still God's plenty for himself and friends.
Should men be rated by poetic rules,
Lord! what a poll would there be rais'd from fools!
Mean time poor wit prohibited must lie,
As if 'twere made some French commodity.
Fools you will have, and rais'd at vast expense;
And yet, as soon as seen, they give offence.
Time was, when none would cry, "That oaf was me;"
But now you strive about your pedigree.
Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down,
But there's a muss of more than half the town.
Each one will challenge a child's part at least;
A sign the family is well increas'd.
Of foreign cattle there's no longer need,
When we're supply'd so fast with English breed.

Well! flourish, countrymen, drink, swear, and roar;
Let every free-born subject keep his whore,
And, wandering in the wilderness about,
At end of forty years not wear her out.
But when you see these pictures, let none dare
To own beyond a limb or single share:
For where the punk is common, he 's a sot,
Who needs will father what the parish got.

XXXIV.

PROLOGUE

TO ARVIRAGUS AND PHILICIA REVIVED.

[BY LODOWICK CARLELL, ESQ.]

SPOKEN BY MR. HART.

WITH sickly actors and an old house too,
We're match'd with glorious theatres and new,
And with our alehouse scenes, and clothes bare worn,
Can neither raise old plays, nor new adorn.
If all these ills could not undo us quite,
A brisk French troop is grown your dear delight;
Who with broad bloody bills call you each day,
To laugh and break your buttons at their play;
Or see some serious piece, which we presume
Is fallen from some incomparable plume;
And therefore, messieurs, if you'll do us grace,
Send lacquies early to preserve your place.
We dare not on your privilege intrench,
Or ask you why ye like them? they are French.
Therefore some go with courtesy exceeding,
Neither to hear nor see, but show their breeding:
Each lady striving to out-laugh the rest;
To make it seem they understood the jest.
Their countrymen come in, and nothing pay,
To teach us English where to clap the play:
Civil, egad! our hospitable land

Bears all the charge, for them to understand:
Mean time we languish, and neglected lie,
Like wives, while you keep better company;
And wish for your own sakes, without a satire,
You 'ad less good breeding, or had more good-nature.

XXXV.

PROLOGUE TO THE PROPHETESS.

BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

REVIVED BY MR. DRYDEN.-SPOKEN BY MR. BETTERTON.

WHAT Nostradame, with all his art, can guess
The fate of our approaching Prophetess?
A play, which, like a perspective set right,
Presents our vast expenses close to sight;
But turn the tube, and there we sadly view
Our distant gains; and those uncertain too:
A sweeping tax, which on ourselves we raise,
And all, like you, in hopes of better days.
When will our losses warn us to be wise?
Our wealth decreases, and our charges rise.
Money, the sweet allurer of our hopes,
Ebbs out in oceans, and comes in by drops.
We raise new objects to provoke delight;
But you grow sated, ere the second sight.
False men, ev'n so you serve your mistresses:
They rise three stories in the towering dress;

And, after all, you love not long enough
To pay the rigging, ere you leave them off.
Never content with what you had before,
But true to change, and Englishmen all o'er.
Now honour calls you hence; and all your care
Is to provide the horrid pomp of war.

In plume and scarf, jack-boots, and Bilboa blade,
Your silver goes, that should support our trade.
Go, unkind heroes, leave our stage to mourn;
Till rich from vanquish'd rebels you return;
And the fat spoils of Teague in triumph draw,
His firkin-butter, and his usquebaugh.
Go, conquerors of your male and female foes;
Men without hearts, and women without hose.
Each bring his love a Bogland captive home;
Such proper pages will long trains become;
With copper collars, and with brawny backs,
Quite to put down the fashion of our blacks.
Then shall the pious Muses pay their vows,
And furnish all their laurels for your brows;
Their tuneful voice shall raise for your delights:
We want not poets fit to sing your flights.
But you, bright beauties, for whose only sake
Those doughty knights such dangers undertake,
When they with happy gales are gone away,
With your propitious presence grace our play;
And with a sigh their empty seats survey:
Then think, on that bare bench my servant sat;
I see him ogle still, and hear him chat;
Selling facetious bargains, and propounding
That witty recreation, call'd dum-founding.
Their loss with patience we will try to bear;
And would do more, to see you often here:
That our dead stage, reviv'd by your fair eyes,
Under a female regency may rise.

Our young poet has brought a piece of work,
In which, though much of art there does not lurk,
It may hold out three days—and that's as long as
Corke.
[not)

But, for this play-(which till I have done, we show
What may be its fortune-by the Lord-I know not.
This I dare swear, no malice here is writ:
'Tis innocent of all things-ev'n of wit.
He's no high-flyer-he makes no sky-rockets,
His squibs are only level'd at your pockets.
And if his crackers light among your pelf,
You are blown up; if not, then he's blown up him-
self.
[ter'd madness:
By this time, I'm something recover'd of my flus-
And now, a word or two in sober sadness.
Ours is a common play; and you pay down
A common harlot's price-just half a crown.
You'll say, I play the pimp, on my friend's score;
But, since 'tis for a friend, your gibes give o'er,
For many a mother has done that before.

66

[it;

How's this," you cry? "an actor write?"--we know But Shakspeare was an actor, and a poet. Has not great Jonson's learning often fail'd? But Shakspeare's greater genius still prevail'd. Have not some writing actors in this age Deserv'd and found success upon the stage? To tell the truth, when our old wits are tir'd, Not one of us but means to be inspir'd. Let your kind presence grace our homely cheer; Peace and the butt is all our business here: So much for that;-and the Devil take small beer,

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XXXVII.

EPILOGUE TO HENRY THE SECOND,

[BY MRS. MOUNTFORT, 1693.]

SPOKEN BY MRS. BRACEGIRDLE.

THUS you the sad catastrophe have seen,
Occasion'd by a mistress and a queen.
Queen Eleanor the proud was French, they say;
But English manufacture got the day.
Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver:
Fair Rosamond was but her nom de guerre.
Now tell me, gallants, would you lead your life
With such a mistress, or with such a wife?
If one must be your choice, which d'ye approve,
The curtain lecture, or the curtain love?
Would ye be godly with perpetual strife,
Still drudging on with homely Joan your wife:
Or take your pleasure in a wicked way,
Like honest whoring Harry in the play?
I guess your minds: the mistress would be taken,
And nauseous matrimony sent a packing.
The Devil's in you all; mankind 's a rogue ;
You love the bride, but you detest the clog.
After a year, poor spouse is left i' th' lurch,
And you, like Haynes, return to mother-church.
Or, if the name of church comes cross your mind,
Chapels of ease behind our scenes you find.
The playhouse is a kind of market-place;
One chaffers for a voice, another for a face:
Nay, some of you, I dare not say how many,
Would buy of me a pen'worth for your penny.
Ev'n this poor face, which with my fan I hide,
Would make a shift my portion to provide,
With some small perquisites I have beside.

S s

Though for your love, perhaps, I should not care,
I could not hate a man that bids me fair.
What might ensue, 'tis hard for me to tell;
But I was drench'd to day for loving well,
And fear the poison that would make me swell.

XXXVIII.

A PROLOGUE.

GALLANTS, bashful poet bids me say,
He's come to lose his maidenhead to day.
Be not too fierce; for he's but green of
age,
And ne'er, till now, debauch'd upon the stage.
He wants the suffering part of resolution,
And comes with blushes to his execution.
Ere you deflower his Muse, he hopes the pit
Will make some settlement upon his wit.
Promise him well, before the play begin:
For he would fain be cozen'd into sin.

"Tis not but that he knows you mean to fail;
But, if you leave him after being frail,
He'll have, at least, a fair pretence to rail:
To call you base, and swear you us'd him ill,
And put you in the new deserters bill.
Lord, what a troop of perjur❜d men we see;
Enow to fill another Mercury!

But this the ladies may with patience brook:
Theirs are not the first colours you forsook.
He would be loth the beauties to offend;
But, if he should, he 's not too old to mend.
He's a young plant, in his first year of bearing;
But his friend swears, he will be worth the rearing.
His gloss is still upon him: though 'tis true
He's yet unripe, yet take him for the blue.
You think an apricot half green is best;
There's sweet and sour, and one side good at least.
Mangos and limes, whose nourishment is little,
Though not for food, are yet preserv'd for pickle.
So this green writer may pretend, at least,
To whet your stomachs for a better feast.
He makes this difference in the sexes too;.
He sells to men, he gives himself to you.
To both he would contribute some delight;
A mere poetical hermaphrodite.

Thus he 's equipp'd, both to be woo'd and woo;
With arms offensive and defensive too;
'Tis hard, he thinks, if neither part will do.

XXXIX.

PROLOGUE TO ALBUMAZAR.

To say this comedy pleas'd long ago,
Is not enough to make it pass you now,
Yet, gentlemen, your ancestors bad wit;
When few men censur'd, and when fewer writ.
And Jonson, of those few the best, chose this
As the best model of his masterpiece:
Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
That Alchemist by this Astrologer;
Here he was fashion'd, and we may suppose
He lik'd the fashion well, who wore the clothes.
But Ben made nobly his what he did mould;
What was another's lead, becomes his gold:
Like an unrighteous conqueror he reigns,
Yet rules that well, which he unjustly gains.

But this our age such authors does afford,
As make whole plays, and yet scarce write one word:
Who, in this anarchy of wit, rob all,

And what's their plunder, their possession call:
Who, like bold padders, scorn by night to prey,
But rob by sunshine, in the face of day:
Nay scarce the common ceremony use
Of, "Stand, sir, and deliver up your Muse;"
But knock the poet down, and, with a grace,
Mount Pegasus before the owner's face.
Faith, if you have such country Toms abroad,
'Tis time for all true men to leave that road.
Yet it were modest, could it but be said,
They strip the living, but these rob the dead;
Dare with the mummies of the Muses play,
And make love to them the Egyptian way;
Or, as a rhyming author would have said,
Join the dead living to the living dead.
Such men in poetry may claim some part:
They have the licence, though they want the art;
And might, where theft was prais'd, for laureats
stand,

Poets, not of the head, but of the hand.
They make the benefits of others studying,
Much like the meals of politic Jack Pudding,
Whose dish to challenge no man has the courage;
'Tis all his own, when once he has spit i' th' porridge.
But, gentlemen, you 're all concern'd in this;
You are in fault for what they do amiss:
For they their thefts still undiscover'd think,
And durst not steal, unless you please to wink.
Perhaps, you may award by your decree,
They should refund; but that can never be.
These men write that which no man else would steal.
For should you letters of reprisal seal,

XL

AN EPILOGUE.

You saw our wife was chaste, yet throughly try'd,
And, without doubt, y' are hugely edify'd;
For, like our hero, whom we show'd to day,
You think no woman true, but in a play.
Love once did make a pretty kind of show :
Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow:
But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
Now some small-chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation;
In comedy your little selves you meet;
"Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges-street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act those follies poets toil to write!
The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly

To some new frisk of contrariety.
You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run;
And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love beside the face was seen;
But every inch of her you now uncase,
And elap a vizard-mask upon the face:
For sins like these, the zealous of the land,
With little hair, and little or no band,
Declare how circulating pestilences
Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences,

Saturn, ev'n now, takes doctoral degrees;
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phœbus, find thy grace,
And, ah, preserve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit confounders, let them go,
And find as little mercy as they show:
The actors thus, and thus thy poets pray;
For every critic sav'd, thou damn'st a play.

XLI.

PROLOGUE

TO THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.

LIKE some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit,
So trembles a young poet at a full pit.
Unus'd to crowds, the parson quakes for fear,
And wonders how the devil he durst come there;
Wanting three talents needful for the place,
Some beard, some learning, and some little grace:
Nor is the puny poet void of care,

For authors, such as our new authors are,
Have not much learning nor much wit to spare:
And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one
But has as little as the very parson:

Both say, they preach and write for your instruction:
But 't is for a third day, and for induction.
The difference is, that though you like the play,
The poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.
But with the parson 't is another case,
He, without holiness, may rise to grace;
The poet has one disadvantage nore,

That, if his play be dull, he 's damn'd all o'er,
Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor.
But dulness well becomes the sable garment;
I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a priest's preferment:
Wit's not his business; and as wit now goes,
Sirs, 't is not so much yours as you suppose,
For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux.
You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears,
At what his beauship says, but what he wears;
So 't is your eyes are tickled, not your ears;
The tailor and the furrier find the stuff,

The wit lies in the dress, and monstrous muff.
The truth on 't is, the payment of the pit
Is like for like, clipt money for clipt wit.
You cannot from our absent author hope
He should equip the stage with such a fop:
Fools change in England, and new fools arise,
For though th' immortal species never dies,
Yet every year new maggots make new flies.
But where he lives abroad, he scarce can find
One fool, for millions that he left behind.

XLII.

PROLOGUE TO THE PILGRIM. REVIVED FOR Our author's benEFIT, ANNO 1700. How wretched is the fate of those who write! Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite. Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the common foe; Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau. Yet, worse, their brother poets damn the play, And roar the loudest, though they never pay. The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry, At every lewd, low character,-That 's I.

He, who writes letters to himself, would swear
The world forgot him, if he was not there.
What should a poet do? "T is hard for one
To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
More goes to make a fop, than fops can find.
Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees
In either of our universities;

Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks,
Because he play'd the fool and writ three books.
But, if he would be worth a poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again:
For all the former fust an stuff he wrote,
Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot:
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and as poor as Job.
One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
There, though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But here, he founders in, and sinks downright.
Had he prepar'd us, and been dull by rule,
Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule:
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room
For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.

But when, if, after all, this godly geer
Is not so senseless as it would appear;
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train,
His cant, like merry Andrew's noble vein,
Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again.
At leisure hours, in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels,
Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go; 't is yet too early day,
To get himself a place in farce or play.
We knew not by what name we should arraign him,
For no one category can contain him;
A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack,
Are load enough to break one ass's back:
At last grown wanton, he presum'd to write,
Traduc'd two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the knight.

XLIII.

EPILOGUE TO THE SAME.

PERHAPS the parson stretch'd a point too far,
When with our theatres he wag'd a war.
He tells you, that this very moral age
Receiv'd the first infection from the stage.
But sure, a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice, returning, brought.
Thus lodg'd (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore
So plentiful a crop of horns before.
The poets, who must live by courts or starve,
Were proud so good a government to serve;
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the stage, for some small snip of gain.
For they, like harlots, under bawds profess'd,
Took all th' ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail,
The court its head, the poets but the tail.

The sin was of our native growth, 't is true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd.
Who standing as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was ador'd with rites divine.
Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
'Twas chamber-practice all, and close devotion.
I pass the peccadillos of their time;
Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Compar'd with one foul act of fornication.
Now, they would silence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the bare-fac'd vice before.

As for reforming us, which some pretend,
That work in England is without an end:
Well may we change, but we shall never mend.
Yet, if you can but bear the present stage,
We hope much better of the coming age.
What would you say, if we should first begin
To stop the trade of love behind the scene:
Where actresses make bold with married men?
For while abroad so prodigal the dolt is,
Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.
In short, we'll grow as moral as we can,
Save here and there a woman or a man:
But neither you, nor we, with all our pains,
Can make clean work; there will be some remains
While you have still your Oats, and we our Hains.

Printed by C. Whittingham,

103, Goswell Street

END OF VOL. VIII.

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