Yet you've an imposition laid on brick,
For all you then laid out at Beast or Gleek;
And when you've rais'd a sum, strait let it fly,
By understanding low and vent'ring high;
Until you have reduc'd it down to tick,
And then recruit again from lime and brick.
WHO JUDGE OF MODERN PLAYS PRECISELY BY
THE RULES OF THE ANCIENTS.
HO ever will regard poetic fury,
When it is once found Idiot by a jury,
And every pert and arbitrary fool
Can all poetic license over-rule;
Assume a barb'rous tyranny, to handle
The Muses worse than Ostrogoth and Vandal;
Make them submit to verdict and report,
And stand or fall to th' orders of a court?
Much less be sentenc'd by the arbitrary
Proceedings of a witless plagiary,
That forges old records and ordinances
Against the right and property of fancies,
More false and nice than weighing of the weather
To th' hundredth atom of the lightest feather,
Or measuring of air upon Parnassus,
With cylinders of Torricellian glasses;
This warm invective was very probably occasioned by Mr. Rymer, Historiographer to Charles II, who censured three tragedies of Beaumont's and Fletcher's.
Reduce all Tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its antique theatre, a cart,
And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads
Of rev'rend choruses and episodes;
Reform and regulate a puppet-play,
According to the true and ancient way,
That not an actor shall presume to squeak,
Unless he have a license for 't in Greek;
Nor Whittington henceforward sell his cat in
Plain vulgar English, without mewing Latin :
No pudding shall be suffer'd to be witty,
Unless it be in order to raise pity;
Nor devil in the puppet-play b' allow'd
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chance t' have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;
That other men may tremble, and take warning,
How such a fatal progeny they're born in ;
For none but such for Tragedy are fitted,
That have been ruin'd only to be pity'd;
And only those held proper to deter,
Who have had th' ill luck against their wills to err.
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,
Between morality and venial vices,
Are qualify'd to be destroy'd by Fate,
For other mortals to take warning at.
As if the antique laws of Tragedy
Did with our own municipal agree,
And serv'd, like cobwebs, but t' ensnare the weak,
And give diversion to the great to break;
To make a less delinquent to be brought
To answer for a greater person's fault,
And suffer all the worst the worst approver
Can, to excuse and save himself, discover.
No longer shall Dramatics be confin'd
To draw true images of all mankind;
To punish in effigy criminals,
Reprieve the innocent, and hang the false;
But a club-law to execute and kill,
For nothing, whomsoe'er they please, at will,
To terrify spectators from committing
The crimes they did, and suffer'd for, unwitting.
These are the reformations of the Stage,
Like other reformations of the age,
On purpose to destroy all wit and sense
As th' other did all law and conscience ;
No better than the laws of British plays,
Confirm'd in th' ancient good King Howel's days,
Who made a gen'ral council regulate
Men's catching women by the-you know what,
And set down in the rubrick at what time
It should be counted legal, when a crime,
Declare when 'twas, and when 'twas not a sin,
And on what days it went out, or came in.
An English poet should be tried b' his peers,
And not by pedants and philosophers,
Incompetent to judge poetic fury,
As butchers are forbid to b' of a jury;
Besides the most intolerable wrong
To try their matters in a foreign tongue,
By foreign jurymen, like Sophocles,
Or Tales falser than Euripides;
When not an English native dares appear
To be a witness for the prisoner;
When all the laws they use t' arraign and try
The innocent and wrong'd delinquent by,
Were made by a foreign lawyer, and his pupils,
To put an end to all poetic scruples,
And by th' advice of virtuosi Tuscans,
Determin'd all the doubts of socks and buskins;
Gave judgment on all past and future plays,
As is apparent by Speroni's case,
Which Lope de Vega first began to steal,
And after him the French filou Corneille;
And since our English plagiaries nim,
And steal their far-fet criticisms from him,
And, by an action falsely laid of Trover,
The lumber for their proper goods recover;
Enough to furnish all the lewd impeachers,
Of witty Beaumont's poetry, and Fletcher's,
Who for a few misprisions of wit,
Are charg'd by those who ten times worse commit;
And for misjudging some unhappy scenes,
Are censur'd for 't with more unlucky sense;
When all their worst miscarriages delight,
And please more, than the best that pedants write.
PROLOGUE TO THE QUEEN OF ARRAGON,
ACTED BEFORE THE DUKE OF YORK, upon
IR, while so many nations strive to pay The tribute of their glories to this day, That gave them earnest of so great a sum Of glory (from your future acts) to come, And which you have discharg'd at such a rate, 5
That all succeeding times must celebrate,
We, that subsist by your bright influence,
And have no life but what we own from thence,
Come humbly to present you, our own way,
With all we have (beside our hearts), a play.
But as devoutest men can pay no more
To deities, than what they gave before,
We bring you only what your great commands
Did rescue for us from engrossing hands,
That would have taken out administration
Of all departed poets' goods i' th' nation;
Or, like to lords of manors, seiz'd all plays
That come within their reach, as wefts and strays,
And claim'd a forfeiture of all past wit,
But that your justice put a stop to it.
"Twas well for us, who else must have been glad
T' admit of all who now write new and bad;
For still the wickeder some authors write,
Others to write worse are encourag'd by 't;
And though those fierce inquisitors of wit,
The critics, spare no flesh that ever writ,
But just as tooth-draw'rs find, among the rout,
Their own teeth work in pulling others out,
So they, decrying all of all that write,
Think to erect a trade of judging by 't.
Small poetry, like other heresies,
By being persecuted multiplies;
But here they're like to fail of all pretence;
For he that writ this play is dead long since,
And not within their power; for bears are said 35
Το spare those that lie still, and seem but dead.
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