TO THE DUKE OF GUISE, 1683.
Our play's a parallel: the Holy League
Begot our Covenant: Guisards got the Whig:
Whate'er our hot-brain'd sheriffs did advance
Was, like our fashions, first produc'd in France;
And, when worn out, well scourg'd, and banish'd
Sent over, like their godly beggars, here.
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 ty'd behind.
Nay, and when one boy 's down, 'twere wondrous
To cry, box fair, and give him time to rise. [nice,
When Fortune favours, none but fools will dally:
Would any of you sparks, if Nan or Mally
Tipt you th' inviting wink, stand shall I; shall I?
Could the same trick, twice play'd, our nation gull? A trimmer cry'd, (that heard me tell the story)
It looks as if the Devil were grown dull,
Or serv'd 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 chang'd, our nasty nation
Chaws its own excrement, th' Association.
"Tis true we have not learn'd 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, e'en 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.
Pray for your king; but yet your purses spare:
Make him not twopence richer by your prayer.
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:
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.
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.
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.
EPILOGUE TO THE SAME.
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,
Huzza'd, and fir'd broadsides at the whole party.
Duels are crimes; but, when the cause is right,
In battle every man is bound to fight.
"Fie, mistress Cooke! faith, you're too rank a
Wish not Whigs hang'd, but pity their hard cases;
You women love to see men make wry faces."
Pray sir, said I, dont think me such a Jew;
I say no more, but give the Devil his due.
"Lenitives," says he, "suit best 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.
"Have we not had men's lives enough already?"
Yes sure;-but you're for holding all things steady:
Now, since the weight hangs all on our side, brother,
You trimmers should to poize it, hang on t' other.
Damn'd 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;
Not birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat,
A twilight animal, true to neither cause,
With Tory wings, but Whiggish teeth and claws.
INTENDED. TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN TO THE PLAY, BEFORE
IT WAS FORBIDDEN LAST SUMMER 2
Two houses join'd, two poets to a play?
You noisy Whigs will sure be pleas'd to day;
It looks so like two shrieves the city way.
But since our discords and divisions cease,
You, Bilboa gallants, learn to keep the peace:
Make here no tilts: let our poor stage alone;
Or, if a decent murder must be done,
Pray take a civil turn to Marybone.
If not, I swear, we 'll pull up all our benches;
Not for your sakes, but for our orange-wenches:
For you thrust wide sometimes; and many a spark,
That misses one, can hit the other mark.
This makes our boxes full; for men of sense
Pay their four shillings in their own defence;
That safe behind the ladies they may stay,
Peep o'er the fan 3, and judge the bloody fray.
'The actress, who spake the epilogue. N.
2 Langbaine says, this play found many enemies at its first appearance on the stage.
3 Hence Mr. Pope's couplet, Essay on Criticism, ver. 543.
The modest fan was lifted up no more,
And virgins smil'd at what they blush'd before.
But other foes give beauty worse alarms;
The posse poetarum 's up in arms:
No woman's fame their libels has escap'd;
Their ink runs venom, and their pens are clapt.
When sighs and prayers their ladies cannot move,
They rail, write treason, and turn Whigs to love.
Nay, and I fear they worse designs advance,
There's a damn'd love-trick now brought o'er from
France;
We charm in vain, and dress, and keep a pother,
Whilst those false rogues are ogling one another.
All sins besides admit some expiation;
But this against our sex is plain damnation.
They join for libels too these women-haters;
And, as they club for love, they club for satires:
The best on 't is they hurt not: for they wear
Stings in their tails, their only venom 's there.
"Tis true, some shot at first the ladies hit,
While able marksmen made, and men of wit:
But now the fools give fire, whose bounce is louder:
And yet, like mere train-bands, they shoot but
powder.
Libels, like plots, sweep all in their first fury;
Then dwindle like an ignoramus jury:
Thus age begins with touzing and with tumbling;
But grunts, and groans, and ends at last in fumbling.
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
SPOKEN BY MR. HART, AT THE ACTING OF THE SILENT
And if they hit in order by some chance,
They call that Nature, which is ignorance.
To such a fame let mere town-wits aspire,
And their gay nonsense their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the senate's hands,
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Muses' feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, resigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.
XXIII.
EPILOGUE,
SPOKEN BY THE SAME.
No poor Dutch peasant, wing'd with all his fear,
Flies with more haste, when the French arms draw
Than we with our poetic train come down,
For refuge hither, from th' infected town:
Heaven for our sins this summer has thought:
To visit us with all the plagues of wit.
A French troop first swept all things in its way;
But those hot Monsieurs were too quick to stay:
Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find
They left their itch of novelty behind.
Th' Italian merry-andrews took their place,
And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace:
Instead of wit, and humours, your delight
Was there to see two hobby-horses fight;
Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in,
WHAT Greece, when learning flourish'd, only knew, And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin.
Athenian judges, you this day renew.
Here too are annual rites to Pallas done,
And here poetic prizes lost or won.
Methinks I see you, crown'd with olives, sit,
And strike a sacred horrour from the pit.
A day of doom is this of your decree,
Where ev'n the best are but by mercy free: [see.
A day, which none but Jonson durst have wish'd to
Here they, who long have known the useful stage,
Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.
As your commissioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you sow:
In your Lycæum first themselves refin'd,
And delegated thence to human kind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come;
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
Th' illiterate writer, emp'ric-like, applies
To minds diseas'd, unsafe, chance remedies:
The learn'd in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care th' anatomy of man ;
Sees virtue, vice, and passions, in their cause,
And fame from Science, not from Fortune, draws.
So Poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make play;
For love, you heard how amorous asses bray'd,
And cats in gutters gave their serenade.
Nature was out of countenance, and each day
Some new-born monster shown you for a play.
But when all fail'd, to strike the stage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines call'd machines are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd,
And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid;
Art magic is for poetry profest;
And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast,
To which Egyptian dotards once did bow,
Upon our English stage are worshipp'd now.
Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown
Macbeth and Simon Magus of the town,
Fletcher's despis'd, your Jonson's out of fashion,
And wit the only drug in all the nation.
In this low ebb our wares to you are shown;
By you those staple authors' worth is known:
For wit's a manufacture of your own.
When you, who only can, their scenes have prais'd,
We'll boldly back, and say, the price is rais'd.
SPOKEN AT OXFORD, BY MRS. MARSHALL.
OFT has our poet wish'd, this happy seat
Might prove his fading Muse's last retreat :
I wonder'd at his wish, but now I find
He sought for quiet, and content of mind;
Which noiseful towns and courts can never know,
And only in the shades, like laurels, grow.
Youth, ere it sees the world, here studies rest,
And age returning thence concludes it best.
What wonder if we court that happiness
Yearly to share, which hourly you possess,
Teaching ev'n you, while the vext world we show,
Your peace to value more, and better know?
'Tis all we can return for favours past,
Whose holy memory shall ever last,
For patronage from him whose care presides
O'er every noble art, and every science guides:
Bathurst, a name the learn'd with reverence know,
And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe;
Whose age enjoys but what his youth deserv'd,
To rule those Muses whom before he serv'd.
His learning, and untainted manners too,
We find, Athenians, are deriv'd to you:
Such ancient hospitality there rests
In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breasts,
Whose kindness was religion to their guests.
Such modesty did to our sex appear,
As, had there been no laws, we need not fear,
Since each of you was our protector here.
Converse so chaste, and so strict virtue shone,
As might Apollo with the Muses own.
Till our return, we must despair to find
Judges so just, so knowing, and so kind.
TO THE UNIVERSITY, OF Oxford.
DISCORD, and plots, which have undone our age,
With the same ruin have o'erwhelm'd the stage.
Our house has suffer'd in the common woe,
We have been troubled with Scotch rebels too.
Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our sisters, all the kinder-hearted,
To Edinburgh gone, or coach'd, or carted.
With bonny bluecap there they act all night,
For Scotch half-crown, in English three-pence
bight.
One nymph, to whom fat sir John Falstaff's lean,
There with her single person fills the scene.
Another, with long use and age decay'd,
Div'd here old woman, and rose there a maid.
Our trusty door-keepers of former time
There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit,
And there's a hero made without dispute:
And that, which was a capon's tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his subjects, to express the care
Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare:
Lac'd linen there would be a dangerous thing;
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring:
The Scot, who wore it, would be chosen king.
But why should I these renegades describe,
When you yourselves have seen a lewder tribe?
Teague has been here, and, to this learned pit,
With Irish action slander'd English wit:
You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear,
As merited a second massacre:
Such as, like Cain, were branded with disgrace,
And had their country stamp'd upon their face.
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THOUGH actors cannot much of learning boast,
Of all who want it, we admire it most:
We love the praises of a learned pit,
As we remotely are ally'd to Wit.
We speak our poets' wit; and trade in ore,
Like those, who touch upon the golden shore:
Betwixt our judges can distinction make,
Discern how much, and why, our poems take:
Mark if the fools, or men of sense, rejoice;
Whether th' applause be only sound or voice.
When our fop gallants, or our city folly,
Clap over-loud, it makes us melancholy :
We doubt that scene which does their wonder raise,
And, for their ignorance, contemn their praise.
Judge then, if we who act, and they who write,
Should not be proud of giving you delight.
London likes grossly; but this nicer pit
Examines, fathoms all the depths of wit;
The ready finger lays on every blot;
Knows what should justly please, and what should
Nature herself lies open to your view;
You judge by her, what draught of her is true,
Where outlines false, and colours seem too faint,
Where bunglers daub, and where true poets paint.
But, by the sacred genius of this place,
By every Muse, by each domestic grace,
Be kind to Wit, which but endeavours well,
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.
Our poets hither for adoption come,
As nations sued to be made free of Rome:
Not in the suffragating tribes to stand,
But in your utmost, last, provincial band.
If his ambition may those hopes pursue,
Who with religion loves your arts and you,
Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,
Than his own mother university.
Thebes did his green, unknowing, youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.
TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
OUR hero's happy in the play 's conclusion;
The holy rogue at last has met confusion:
Though Arius all along appear'd a saint,
The last act show'd him a true Protestant.
Eusebius (for you know I read Greek authors)
Reports, that, after all these plots and slaughters,
The court of Constantine was full of glory,
And every Trimmer turn'd addressing Tory.
They follow'd him in herds as they were mad:
When Clause was king, then all the world was glad.
Whigs kept the places they possest before,
And most were in a way of getting more;
Which was as much as saying, gentlemen,
Here's power and money to be rogues again.
Indeed, there were a sort of peaking tools,
(Some call them modest, but I call them fools)
Men much more loyal, though not half so loud;
But these poor devils were cast behind the crowd.
For bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense,
But good men starve for want of impudence.
Besides all these, there were a sort of wights,'
I think my author calls them Teckelites,
Such hearty rogues against the king and laws,
They favour'd ev'n a foreign rebel's cause.
When their own damn'd design was quash'd and aw'd,
At least, they gave it their good word abroad.
As many a man, who, for a quiet life,
Breeds out his bastard, not to nose his wife;
Thus o'er their darling plot these Trimmers cry ;
And though they cannot keep it in their eye,
They bind it 'prentice to count Teckeley.
They believe not the last plot; may I be curst,
If I believe they e'er believ'd the first.
No wonder their own plot no plot they think;
The man, that makes it, never smells the stink.
And now it comes into my head, I'll tell
Why these damn'd Trimmers lov'd the Turks so well.
Th' original Trimmer, though a friend to no man,
Yet in his heart ador'd a pretty woman;
He knew that Mahomet laid up for ever
Kind black-ey'd rogues, for every true believer;
And, which was more than mortal man e'er tasted,
One pleasure that for threescore twelvemonths
lasted:
To turn for this, may surely be forgiven:
Who'd not be circumcis'd for such a Heaven?
TO THE DISAPPOINTMENT; OR, THE MOTHER IN FASHION. [BY MR. SOUTHERNE, 1684.]
How comes it, gentlemen, that now a-days,
When all of you so shrewdly judge of plays,
Our poets tax you still with want of sense?
All prologues treat you at your own expense.
Sharp citizens a wiser way can go;
They make you fools, but never call you so.
They, in good-manners, seldom make a slip,
But treat a common whore with ladyship:
But here each saucy wit at random writes,
And uses ladies as he uses knights.
Our author, young and grateful in his nature,
Vows, that from him no nymph deserves a satire:
Nor will he ever draw-I mean his rhyme-
Against the sweet partaker of his crime.
Nor is he yet so bold an undertaker,
To call men fools; 'tis railing at their Maker.
Besides, he fears to split upon that shelf;
He's young enough to be a fop himself:
And, if his praise can bring you all a-bed,
He swears such hopeful youth no nation ever bred.
Your nurses, we presume, in such a case,
Your father chose, because he lik'd the face;
And, often, they supply'd your mother's place.
The dry nurse was your mother's ancient maid,
Who knew some former slip she ne'er betray'd.
Betwixt them both, for milk and sugar-candy,
Your sucking-bottles were well stor'd with brandy.
Your father, to initiate your discourse,
Meant to have taught you first to swear and curse,
But was prevented by each careful nurse:
For, leaving dad and mam, as names too common,
They taught you certain parts of man and woman.
I pass your schools; for there when first you came,
You would be sure to learn the Latin name.
In colleges you scorn'd the art of thinking,
But learn'd all moods and figures of good drinking:
Thence come to town, you practise play, to know
The virtues of the high dice, and the low.
Each thinks himself a sharper most profound:
He cheats by pence; is cheated by the pound.
With these perfections, and what else he gleans,
The spark sets up for love behind our scenes;
Hot in pursuit of princesses and queens.
There, if they know their man, with cunning carriage,
Twenty to one but it concludes in marriage.
He hires some homely room, love's fruits to gather,
And, garret-high, rebels against his father:
But he once dead-
Brings her in triumph, with her portion, down,
A toilet, dressing-box, and half a crown.
Some marry first, and then they fall to scowering,
Which is, refining marriage into whoring.
Our women batten well on their good-nature;
All they can rap and rend for the dear creature.
But while abroad so liberal the dolt is,
Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.
Last, some there are, who take their first degrees
Of lewdness in our middle galleries.
The doughty bullies enter bloody drunk,
Invade and grubble one another's punk:
They caterwaul, and make a dismal rout,
Call sons of whores, and strike, but ne'er lug out:
Thus while for paltry punk they roar and stickle,
They make it bawdier than a conventicle.
TO THE KING AND QUEEN', UPON THE UNION OF THE TWO COMPANIES IN 1686.
SINCE faction ebbs, and rogues grow out of fashion,
Their penny-scribes take care t' inform the nation,
How well men thrive in this or that plantation:
How Pensylvania's air agrees with Quakers,
And Carolina's with Associators:
Both ev'n too good for madmen and for traitors.
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'd it, to be free,
Those play-house Whigs set up for property.
At the opening of their theatre, 1683,
We'll take no blundering verse, no fustian tumor,
No dribbling love, from this or that presumer;
No dull fat fool shamm'd on the stage for humour.
For, faith, some of them such vile stuff have made,
As none but fools or fairies ever play'd;
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:
Whig poets and Whig sheriffs may hang together.
NEw ministers, when first they get in place,
Must have a care to please; and that's our case:
Some laws for public welfare we design,
If you, the power supreme, will please to join:
There are a sort of prattlers in the pit,
Who either have, or who pretend to wit:
These noisy sirs so loud their parts rehearse,
That oft the play is silenc'd by the farce.
Let such be dumb, this penalty to shun,
Each to be thought my lady's eldest son.
But stay: methinks some vizard mask I see,
Cast out her lure from the mid gallery:
About her all the fluttering sparks are rang'd;
The noise continues though the scene is chang'd:
Now growling, sputtering, wauling, such a clutter,
'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:
Then for your lacqueys, and your train beside,
By whate'er name or title dignify'd,
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; Think, like good Christians, on your bearns and wives:
Think on your souls; but by your lugging forth,
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 watch'd besides with jealous care;
What if my lady's page should find you there?
My lady knows t'a tittle what there's in ye;
No passing your gilt shilling for a guinea.
Thus, gentlemen, we have summ'd 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.
TO THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES.
LADIES! (I hope there's none behind to hear)
I long to whisper something in your ear:
There's treason in the play against our sex.
A secret, which does much my mind perplex:
A man that 's false to love, that vows and cheats,
And kisses every living thing he meets.
A rogue in mode, I dare not speak too broad,
One that does something to the very bawd.
Out on him, traitor, for a filthy beast;
Nay, and he's like the pack of all the rest,
None of them stick at mark; they all deceive.
Some Jew has chang'd the text, I half believe,
There Adam cozen'd our poor grandame Eve.
To hide their faults, they rap out oaths, and
Now, though we lie, we 're too well-bred to swear,
So we compound for half the sin we owe,
But men are dipt for soul and body too;
And, when found out, excuse themselves, pox cant
With Latin stuff, "Perjuria ridet amantûm."
I'm not book-learn'd, to know that word in vogue,
But I suspect 'tis Latin for a rogue.
I'm sure, I never heard that scritch-owl hollow'd
In my poor ears, but separation follow'd.
How can such perjur'd villains e'er be saved?
Achitophel 's not half so false to David.
With vows and soft expressions to allure,
They stand, like foremen of a shop, demure:
No sooner out of sight, but they are gadding,
And for the next new face ride out a-padding.
Yet, by their favour, when they have been kiss-
ing,
We can perceive the ready money missing.
Well! we may rail; but 'tis as good ev'n wink;
Something we find, and something they will sink.
But since they 're at renouncing, 'tis our parts,
To trump their diamonds, as they trump our
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