PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE KING

AND QUEEN,

AT THE OPENING OF THEIR THEATRE UPON THE UNION OF THE TWO COMPANIES IN 1682.

PROLOGUE.

SINCE faction ebbs, and rogues grow out of fashion,
Their penny-scribes take care to inform the nation
How well men thrive in this or that plantation:

Truth is, our land with saints is so run o'er,
And every age produces such a store,

That now there's need of two New-Englands more.
What's this, you'll say, to us and our vocation?
Only thus much, that we have left our station,
And made this Theatre our new plantation.
The factious natives never could agree;
But aiming, as they call it, to be free,
Those play-house Whigs set up for property.
Some say, they no obedience paid of late,
But would new fears and jealousies create,
Till topsy-turvy they had turned the State.

Plain sense, without the talent of foretelling,

10

15

Might guess 'twould end in downright knocks and quelling; 20
For seldom comes there better of rebelling.

When men will needlessly their freedom barter

For lawless power, sometimes they catch a Tartar;

(There's a damned word that rhymes to this, called Charter.) §

But since the victory with us remains,

25

You shall be called to twelve in all our gains,
(If you'll not think us saucy for our pains.)

*

An union was effected between the two rival companies of the King's and Duke's Houses,Drury Lane and Dorset Gardens,-in the end of the year 1682; and Dryden was selected to write a Prologue and an Epilogue for the first representation by the two companies acted on November 16, 1682, at Drury Lane. The King and Queen attended this representation. Betterton spoke the Prologue, and Smith the Epilogue. The Duke's House had latterly been the more prosperous, and had the advantage in the treaty of union. Cibber, in his Apology, has misstated the date of this union, describing it as in 1684; and Scott has mistakenly put it at 1686. This Prologue and Epilogue were published by Tonson in 1683.

The grant of Pennsylvania was made to William Penn in 1630, and the colony was founded

in 1682.

"Associators" refers to the project of an Association discovered among Shaftesbury's papers when he was apprehended and sent to the Tower in 1681, of which so much use was made against him and his party. Shaftesbury was one of the chief founders of Carolina colony.

A reference to the Charter of the City of London, which the Crown was now endeavouring to break, and succeeded in breaking in the next year.

Old men shall have good old plays to delight 'em :
And you, fair ladies and gallants, that slight 'em,
We'll treat with good new plays, if our new wits can
write 'em.

We'll take no blundering verse, no fustian tumour,
No dribbling love from this or that presumer,
No dull fat fool shammed on the stage for humour :'
For, faith, some of them such vile stuff have made,
As none but fools or fairies ever played ;
But 'twas, as shopmen say, to force a trade.
We've given you tragedies all sense defying,
And singing men in woful metre dying;
This 'tis when heavy lubbers will be flying.
All these disasters we well hope to weather;
We bring you none of our old lumber hither;

30

35

40

Whig poets and Whig sheriffs may hang together.†

The noise continues, though the scene is changed :

Now growling, sputtering, wauling, such a clutter!

15

'Tis just like puss defendant in a gutter;

Fine love, no doubt; but ere two days are o'er ye,

The surgeon will be told a woful story.

Let vizard mask her naked face expose,

On pain of being thought to want a nose:

20

Then for your lacqueys, and your train beside,
(By whate'er name or title dignified,)

* Supposed to refer to Dryden's adversary, Shadwell, whose fatness is so mercilessly satirized in "Mac Flecknoe" and the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel.

Scott, who misdates this Prologue as of 1686, blames the last line as "an inhuman jest" on the execution of Cornish, sheriff in 1680, and executed in October 1685 for the Rye House Plot; but this of course is a mistake following from the first mistake of the date. Mr. R. Bell, who corrects Scott, falls himself into an error, interpreting the line as a reference to the execution of College, in August 1681. It is clear that the line means no more than a generat malediction of Whig sheriffs and Whig poets: Tory sheriffs had just been forced upon the City, and Dryden has already struck at Shadwell as dispensed with in the new arrangements for the united company.

*

They roar so loud, you'd think behind the stairs
Tom Dove, and all the brotherhood of bears:
They're grown a nuisance, beyond all disasters;
We've none so great but their unpaying masters.
We beg you, sirs, to beg your men that they
Would please to give you leave to hear the play.
Next, in the play-house, spare your precious lives;

25

Think, like good Christians, on your bearns and wives;
Think on your souls; but by your lugging forth,

30

It seems you know how little they are worth.
If none of these will move the warlike mind,
Think on the helpless whore you leave behind.
We beg you, last, our scene-room to forbear
And leave our goods and chattels to our care.
Alas! our women are but washy toys,
And wholly taken up in stage employs :
Poor willing tits they are: but yet, I doubt,
This double duty soon will wear them out.

Then you are watched besides with jealous care:
What if my lady's page should find you there?
My lady knows to a tittle what there's in ye;
No passing your gilt shilling for a guinea.
Thus, gentlemen, we have summed up in short
Our grievances, from country, town, and court:
Which humbly we submit to your good pleasure;
But first vote money, then redress at leisure.

35

40

45

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO "THE

OF GUISE."+

1682.

OUR play's a parallel; the Holy League
Begot our Covenant; Guisards got the Whig;+
Whate'er our hot-brained sheriffs did advance
Was, like our fashions, first produced in France;

DUKE

A bear so named, exhibited at the Bear-Garden, and a public favourite. Compare the Prologue to "The Secular Masque," line 3.

4.

This play, a joint composition of Dryden and Lee, was first represented December It was the first new play brought out by the united company. 1682. The apparent application of the play to the political circumstances of England at that time, and more especially points of resem blance in the history of the Duke of Guise to that of Monmouth, led the Lord Chamberlain (the Farl of Arlington) to withhold his licence for some months. The King's partiality for Monmouth and fear of what might be the effect on the public of a play which might be understood as predicting for Monmouth an assassination like that of Guise were the causes of the Court's unwillingness to allow the play to be acted. The Court's scruples, however, gave way. The play was received with discordant feelings by the Whig and Tory portions of the audience; and at first the disapprobation decidedly predominated. The play was published in 1683; and, together with the Prologue and Epilogue which were recited, Dryden published another Epilogue which had been intended in the first instance to be spoken.

* See the Epistle to the Whigs," prefixed to "The Medal," and the notes at p. 124

And when worn out, well scourged, and banished there,
Sent over, like their godly beggars, here.*

5

Could the same trick, twice played, our nation gull?
It looks as if the Devil were grown dull;
Or served us up in scorn his broken meat,
And thought we were not worth a better cheat.
The fulsome Covenant, one would think in reason,
Had given us all our bellies full of treason;
And yet, the name but changed, our nasty nation
Chaws its own excrement, the Association.

'Tis true, we have not learned their poisoning way,
For that's a mode but newly come in play;
Besides, your drug's uncertain to prevail,
But your true Protestant can never fail
With that compendious instrument, a flail.

Go on, and bite, even though the hook lies bare;
Twice in one age expel the lawful heir,
Once more decide religion by the sword,
And purchase for us a new tyrant-lord.

10

15

20

Pray for your king, but yet your purses spare;
Make him not twopence richer by your prayer.

25

To show you love him much, chastise him more,

And make him very great and very poor.

Push him to wars, but still no pence advance;

Let him lose England, to recover France.

Cry freedom up with popular noisy votes,

30

And get enough to cut each other's throats.

Lop all the rights that fence your monarch's throne;

For fear of too much power, pray leave him none.
A noise was made of arbitrary sway;

But, in revenge, you Whigs have found a way
An arbitrary duty now to pay.

35

And, that your meaning none may fail to scan,
Do what in coffee-houses you began;
Pull down the master, and set up the man.

Let his own servants turn to save their stake,
Glean from his plenty, and his wants forsake;
But let some Judas near his person stay,
To swallow the last sop, and then betray.
Make London independent of the Crown,
A realm apart, the kingdom of the town.
Let ignoramus juries § find no traitors,
And ignoramus poets scribble satires.

40

45

* A reference in very bad taste to the French Huguenot refugees.

+ Chaw occurs in "The Medal," line 147, where the rhyme requires the spelling; see note. The flail was a sort of bludgeon in use with the rank and file of the Whig party, and known now as the Protestant flail. It was jointed so as to fold up and lie concealed in the pocket.

§ "Ignoramus juries" refers to the grand jury which ignored the bill of high treason against Lord Shaftesbury in the previous year.

EPILOGUE.

Much time and trouble this poor play has cost;
And faith, I doubted once the cause was lost.*
Yet no one man was meant, nor great nor small; †
Our poets, like frank gamesters, threw at all.
They took no single aim:

But, like bold boys, true to their prince and hearty,
Huzzaed, and fired broadsides at the whole party.
Duels are crimes; but, when the cause is right,

In battle every man is bound to fight.

For what should hinder me to sell my skin,

Dear as I could, if once my hand were in?

Se defendendo never was a sin.

'Tis a fine world, my masters; right or wrong,

The Whigs must talk, and Tories hold their tongue.
They must do all they can,

But we, forsooth, must bear a Christian mind,
And fight, like boys, with one hand tied behind;
Nay, and when one boy's down, 'twere wondrous wise
To cry,- -"Box fair, and give him time to rise."
When Fortune favours, none but fools will dally;
Would any of you sparks, if Nan or Mally
Tipped you the inviting wink, stand, shall I, shall I?
A Trimmer cried (that heard me tell this story),

66

Fie, Mistress Cook! faith, you're too rank a Tory! "Wish not Whigs hanged, but pity their hard cases ; "You women love to see men make wry faces."

66

Pray, Sir," said I, "don't think me such a Jew; "I say no more, but give the devil his due."

66

Lenitives," says he, "best suit with our condition."-
"Jack Ketch," says I, "'s an excellent physician."-
"I love no blood." "Nor I, Sir, as I breathe;
"But hanging is a fine dry kind of death.”-
"We Trimmers are for holding all things even.”—
"Yes; just like him that hung 'twixt hell and heaven."-

66

Have we not had men's lives enow already?"-
"Yes, sure: but you're for holding all things steady.
"Now since the weight hangs all on one side, brother,
"You Trimmers should, to poise it, hang on the other."
Damned neuters, in their middle way of steering,
Are neither fish nor flesh nor good red-herring :
Not Whigs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that;

Nor birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat:
A twilight animal, true to neither cause,

With Tory wings, but Whiggish teeth and claws.

* This refers to the delay in licensing the play.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Here Dryden denies the application of the character of the Duke of Guise to Monmouth, as he did at greater length in his pamphlet, the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise," published in 1684.

The Trimmers were a small party of politicians who stood between the Whigs and Tories and were for a middle course. The chief of the Trimmers was George Savile, marquis of Halifax, who wrote "The Character of a Trimmer," and another distinguished member of the party was Sir William Coventry, Halifax's uncle, who described a Trimmer thus: "one who would sit upright and not overturn the boat by swaying too much on either side."