position to your Lordship's equal intentions, under a false and intricate pretence of not being able to comply with them; the town is likely to be more entertained with the private dissentions, than the public performance of either, and the actors in a perpetual fear and necessity of petitioning your Lordship every season for new relief.
To succour the distressed is the first mark of greatness, and your Lordship is eminently distinguished for a virtue that certainly claims the next place to it. The disinterested choice and manner of your Lordship's disposing places in your gift, are proofs that you always have the claims of merit under your first and tenderest consideration. And from the assurance of this thought, my Lord, the stage, the poets, and the players, lay their cause, their hopes, and utmost expectations at your Lordship's feet for sup port and protection.
Your Lordship's most humble,
And most obedient servant,
SINCE plays are but the mirrors of our lives,
And soon or late mankind are chain'd to wives;
Since those dissolveless fetters too, must be
Our greatest happiness or misery;
What subject ought, in reason, more to please ye,
Than an attempt to make those chains sit easy?
Though in the noose so many souls seem curst,
Pray who's in fault?—For when you've said y
You all did feel it happiness-at first.
Therefore our author drew you once the life
Of careless husband, and enduring wife,
Who by her patience (though much out of fashion)
Retriev'd, at last, her wanderer's inclination.
Yet some there are, who still arraign the play,
At her tame temper shock'd, as who should say-
The price, for a dull husband, was too much to pay.
Had he been strangled sleeping, who should hurt ye
?
When so provok'd- -revenge had been a virtue.
Well then-to do his former moral right,
Or set such measures in a fairer light,
He gives you now a wife, he's sure, in fashion,
Whose wrongs use modern means for reparation.
No fool, that will her life in sufferings waste,
But furious, proud, and insolently chaste;
Who more in honour jealous, than in love,
Resolves resentment shall her wrongs remove :
Not to be cheated with his civil face,
But scorns his falsehood, and to prove him base,
Mobb'd up in hack triumphant dogs him to the place.
These modish measures, we presume, you'll own,
Are oft what wives of gallantry have done ;
But if their consequence should meet the curse
Of making a provok'd aversion worse,
Then you his former moral must allow,
Or own the satire just be shews you now.
Some other follies too, our scenes present,
Some warn the fair from gaming, when extravagant.
But when undone, you see the dreadful stake,
That hard-press'd virtue is reduc'd to make ;
Think not the terrors you behold her in,
Are rudely drawn t' expose what has been seen;
But, as the friendly muse's tenderest way,
To let her dangers warn you from the depth of play.
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