He, like the prudent citizen, takes care
To keep for better marts his staple ware;
His toys are good enough for Stourbridge fair.
Tricks were the fashion; if it now be spent,
'Tis time enough at Easter to invent;
No man will make up a new suit for Lent.
If now and then he takes a small pretence,
To forage for a little wit and sense,
Pray pardon him, he meant you no offence.
Next summer, Nostradamus tells, they say,
That all the critics shall be shipped away,
And not enow be left to damn a play.
To every sail beside, good Heaven, be kind;
But drive away that swarm with such a wind
That not one locust may be left behind!

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by LIMBERHAM.

I beg a boon, that, ere you all disband,
Some one would take my bargain off my hand;
To keep a punk is but a common evil;

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To find her false, and marry,-that's the devil.
Well, I ne'er acted part in all my life,

5

But still I was fobbed off with some such wife.

I find the trick; these poets take no pity

Of one that is a member of the city.
We cheat you lawfully, and in our trades;
You cheat us basely with your common jades.
Now I am married, I must sit down by it;

10

But let me keep my dear-bought spouse in quiet.
Let none of you damned Woodalls of the pit
Put in for shares to mend our breed in wit;

We know your bastards from our flesh and blood,

15

Not one in ten of yours e'er comes to good.

In all the boys their fathers' virtues shine,

But all the female fry turn pugs, like mine.

When these grow up, Lord, with what rampant gadders

Our counters will be thronged, and roads with padders ! 20
This town two bargains has, not worth one farthing,

A Smithfield horse, and wife of Covent Garden. †

Gadders; wanderers, vagabonds.

+ Shakespeare makes Falstaff say, when told by his page that Bardolph had gone to Smithfield to buy him a horse: "I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield; an 1 could get me a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived." (Second Part of Henry IV. act i sc. 2.)

PROLOGUE TO "THE TRUE WIDOW." *

1678.

HEAVEN Save ye, gallants, and this hopeful age!
Ye are welcome to the downfall of the stage.
The fools have laboured 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 cruset 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 raised from fools!
Meantime poor wit prohibited must lie,

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ΙΟ

As if 'twere made some French commodity

Fools you will have, and raised 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.

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Each one will challenge a child's part at least ;
A sign the family is well increast.

Of foreign cattle there's no longer need,

When we're supplied so fast with English breed.

Well! flourish, countrymen; drink, swear, and roar ;

25

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;

30

For where the punk is common, he's a sot
Who needs will father what the parish got.

Shadwell's comedy of "The True Widow" was produced at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, March 21, 1678. After the fierce quarrel of Dryden and Shadwell, Dryden gave this same Prologue to Mrs. Behn, in 1690, for her play "The Widow Ranter."

+ Cruse was turned into cause in Broughton's edition of 1743, and this inexcusable mistake appears in every succeeding edition of Dryden.

A muss is a scramble.

"Of late, when I cried, 'Ho!'

Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth,

And

cry, 'Your will?"

SHAKESPEARE, Antony and Cleopatra, act iii sc. 13.

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO "CEDIPUS.”*

1678.

PROLOGUE.

WHEN Athens all the Grecian states did guide,
And Greece gave laws to all the world beside ;
Then Sophocles with Socrates did sit,
Supreme in wisdom one, and one in wit:
And wit from wisdom differed not in those,
But as 'twas sung in verse or said in prose.
Then Edipus on crowded theatres
Drew all admiring eyes and listening ears:
The pleased spectator shouted every line,
The noblest, manliest, and the best design!
And every critic of each learned age,
By this just model has reformed the stage.
Now, should it fail, (as Heaven avert our fear!)
Damn it in silence, lest the world should hear.
For were it known this poem did not please,
You might set up for perfect savages:
Your neighbours would not look on you as men,
But think the nation all turned Picts again.
Faith, as you manage matters, 'tis not fit
You should suspect yourselves of too much wit :
Drive not the jest too far, but spare this piece;
And for this once be not more wise than Greece.
See twice do not pell-mell to damning fall,
Like true-born Britons, who ne'er think at all :
Pray be advised; and though at Mons you won, †
On pointed cannon do not always run.

With some respect to ancient wit proceed,

And take the first four Councils for your creed.

Edipus," a joint production of Dryden and Lee, was brought out at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens, in the latter part of the year 1678. The references in the Prologue to the battle of Mons, fought in August 1678, and to the Woollen Act which came into operation on the 1st of the same month, fix the date of its representation as after August. Dryden wrote the first and second acts of the play: the rest was chiefly written by Lee. Dryden briefly refers in the Epilogue to Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille, who had treated the subject.

The English auxiliary force, commanded by the Earl of Ossory, had aided effectively in the victory gained by the Prince of Orange over the French at Mons, in August 1678.

EPILOGUE.

What Sophocles could undertake alone,
Our poets found a work for more than one;
And therefore two lay tugging at the piece,
Both yoked to draw the ponderous mass from Greece;
A weight that bent even Seneca's strong Muse,
And which Corneille's shoulders did refuse :*
So hard it is the Athenian harp to string!
So much two Consuls yield to one just King.
Terror and pity this whole poem sway;
The mightiest machines that can move a play.
How heavy will those vulgar souls be found,

Whom two such engines cannot move from ground!

When Greece and Rome have smiled upon this birth,
You can but damn for one poor spot of earth;
And when your children find your judgment such,

They'll scorn their sires, and wish themselves born Dutch;
Each haughty poet will infer with ease,
How much his wit must underwrite to please.

As some strong churl would brandishing advance
The monumental sword that conquered France,
So you by judging this your judgment teach,
Thus far you like, that is, thus far you reach.
Since then the vote of full two thousand years
Has crowned this plot, and all the dead are theirs,
Think it a debt you pay, not alms you give,

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And in your own defence let this play live.
Think them not vain, when Sophocles is shown,

To praise his worth, they humbly doubt their own.

Yet as weak States each other's power assure,

Weak poets by conjunction are secure.

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Their treat is what your palates relish most,

Charm! song! and show! a murder and a ghost!

We know not what you can desire or hope,

To please you more, but burning of a Pope.

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO "TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, OR TRUTH FOUND TOO LATE."†

1679.

PROLOGUE.

SEE, my loved Britons, see your Shakespeare rise,
An awful ghost confessed to human eyes!

* Mr. R. Bell has inserted the word old before Corneille, as he also did in the Epilogue to "Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen," line 6, where see note. Compare the word reveille in the Secular Masque," lines 63, 67, where Scott printed reveillé quite incorrectly.

+ Dryden's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida,"-a decided deterioration,— was brought out at Dorset Gardens in April 1679. The Prologue was spoken by Betterton, crowned with bays as the ghost of Shakespeare.

Unnamed, methinks, distinguished I had been
From other shades by this eternal green,
About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive,
And with a touch their withered bays revive.
Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age,
I found not, but created first the stage.
And if I drained no Greek or Latin store,
'Twas that my own abundance gave me more,
On foreign trade I needed not rely,
Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply.
In this my rough-drawn play you shall behold
Some master-strokes, so manly and so bold
That he who meant to alter found them such;
He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch.
Now, where are the successors to my name?
What bring they to fill out a poet's fame?
Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age;
Scarce living to be christened on the stage!
For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense,
That tolls the knell for their departed sense.
Dulness might thrive in any trade but this :
'Twould recommend to some fat benefice.
Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace,
Might meet with reverence in its proper place.
The fulsome clench that nauseates the town
Would from a judge or alderman go down,
Such virtue is there in a robe and gown!
And that insipid stuff which here you hate,
Might somewhere else be called a grave debate ;
Dulness is decent in the Church and State.
But I forget that still 'tis understood,
Bad plays are best decried by showing good.
Sit silent then, that my pleased soul may see
A judging audience once, and worthy me.
My faithful scene from true records shall tell,
How Trojan valour did the Greek excel;
Your great forefathers shall their fame regain,
And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain.

5

That stand so thick one cannot miss the flock,

Poets have cause to dread a keeping pit,
When women's cullies come to judge of wit.