EPILOGUE. Spoken by MRS. ELLEN when she was to be carried off dead by the Bearers.* TO THE BEARER. Hold are you mad? you damned, confounded dog! TO THE AUDIENCE. I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye; I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly. For, after death, we sprites have just such natures. O poet, damned dull poet, who could prove 5 10 15 20 25 Here Nelly lies, who, though she lived a slattern, 30 "Mrs. Ellen" is Nell Gwyn. She acted the part of Valeria in this play having stabbed herself, at the end of the play, she is about to be carried off dead, when by a strange surprise she rouses herself to deliver this Epilogue. Curl says that the King was so captivated by Nell's delivery of this Epilogue on the occasion of the first acting of the play, that he went behind the scenes, and carried her off that night. There may be some truth in the story: there is no doubt that Nell Gwyn first became Charles's mistress about this time. She produced a son to the King in May of the following year. See the note on next page. + St. Catherine was "the performed that part. Royal Martyr" of the play; and Mrs. Boutell was the lady who CONQUEST OF GRANADA. 407 PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE ΤΟ "ALMANZOR AND ALMAHIDE, OR THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA."* 1670. PROLOGUE. Spoken by MRS. ELLEN GWYN in a broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt. THIS jest was first of the other House's making, This is that hat, whose very sight did win ye 5 To laugh and clap as though the devil were in ye. As then for Nokes, so now I hope you'll be So dull, to laugh once more for love of me. A broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt towards a plot. Thus they out-write each other-with a hat! Must be worn out with being blocks of the stage: They thought you liked what only you forgave; And brought you more dull sense, dull sense much worse 25 They bring old iron and glass upon the stage, To barter with the Indians of our age. Still they write on, and like great authors show; But 'tis as rollers in wet gardens grow 30 Heavy with dirt, and gathering as they go. May none, who have so little understood, To like such trash, presume to praise what's good ! The two parts of "Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada," tragedies in heroic verse like "Tyrannic Love," were both performed in 1670. Nell Gwyn, who acted in both, playing The First Part therefore would probably have appeared Almahide, and spoke the Prologue to the First Part on its first appearance, was confined on May 8, 1670, of a son, the Duke of St. Alban's. Malone fixed the time of the first representation of these two plays for the some little time after. winter of 1669 and spring of 1670: but he was probably mistaken. The borrowing of the jest of broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt from Nokes and the other House, mentioned in the opening lines of the Prologue, is said to refer to a caricature of French dress by Nokes at the Duke of York's Theatre, during the visit of the Duchess of Orleans and her suite to England, in May 1670. Both parts were published in 1672. And may those drudges of the stage, whose fate To set on all French wares, whose worst is wit. 35 40 Which makes you mourn, and makes the vulgar laugh: 45 EPILOGUE. Success, which can no more than beauty last, 5 Is gained with ease, but then she's lost as soon; 10 15 This, some years hence, our poet's case may prove; But yet, he hopes, he's young enough to love. When forty comes, if e'er he live to see For at both houses 'twas a sickly year! 20 25 30 * Scott and Bell have changed humour into honour; an evidently improper change. This line helps to fix the date of the first appearance of the play; there had been a year's delay since "Tyrannic Love" appeared. The lines which follow refer to Nell Gwyn's preg nancy and confinement; another actress of the King's House, Mrs. James, was absent in 1669, and Mrs. Davis of the Duke's Theatre was "sick" in that year. (Cunningham's "Story of Nell Gwyn," p. 69.) Theatre was pronounced with the a long. The same rhyme occurs in Epilogue to "Marriagea-la-Mode," line 9. And pity us, your servants, to whose cost, Weakness sometimes great passion does express ; 35 40 PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE SECOND PART OF "ALMANZOR AND ALMAHIDE, OR THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA." 1670. PROLOGUE. THEY who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write, A playhouse gives them fame; and up there starts, So common faces on the stage appear; We take them in, and they turn beauties here. With his white wig sets off his nut-brown face; That done, bears up to the prize, and views each limb, To know her by her rigging and her trim; Then, the whole noise of fops to wagers go, "Pox on her, 't must be she ;" and-"Damme, no!"- 20 Just so, I prophesy, these wits to-day Will blindly guess at our imperfect play; With what new plots our Second Part is filled, Who must be kept alive, and who be killed. And as those vizard-masks maintain that fashion, 25 To soothe and tickle sweet imagination; So our dull poet keeps you on with masking, To make you think there's something worth your asking. 30 EPILOGUE.* They who have best succeeded on the stage 'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown, If love and honour now are higher raised, 'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised. PROLOGU E. Spoken on the First Day of the King's House acting after the Fire.‡ 1672. So shipwracked passengers escape to land, So look they, when on the bare beach they stand, * Dryden was called to account for his criticisms in this Epilogue on Ben Jonson and other old dramatists; and he prefixed a "Defence of the Epilogue, or an Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the last Age," when he published the piece. Cobb, the water-bearer in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," and Captain Otter in Jonson's "Epicene, or the Silent Woman," who gave his drinking-cups the names of Horse, Bull, and Bear. 1 The King's Theatre in Drury Lane was burnt down in January 1672, and the Company took the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields which had been the Duke of York's Theatre. Lincoln's Inn |