* * * * *

XXVI.

PROLOGUE TO “SOPHONISBA,”

ACTED AT OXFORD, 1680.

WRITTEN BY NATHAN LEE.

  Thespis,[55] the first professor of our art,
  At country wakes sung ballads from a cart. 
  To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
  “Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis.” 
  But AEschylus, says Horace in some page,
  Was the first mountebank that trod the stage: 
  Yet Athens never knew your learned sport
  Of tossing poets in a tennis-court. 
  But ’tis the talent of our English nation,
  Still to be plotting some new reformation:  10
  And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
  Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,
  Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,
  And every prayer be longer than a play. 
  Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,
  For disbelieving of a Popish plot: 
  Your poets shall be used like infidels,
  And worst, the author of the Oxford bells: 
  Nor should we ’scape the sentence, to depart,
  Even in our first original, a cart. 20
  No zealous brother there would want a stone
  To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan: 
  Religion, learning, wit, would be suppress’d—­
  Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast: 
  Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,
  As chief supporters of the triple crown;
  And Aristotle’s for destruction ripe;
  Some say he call’d the soul an organ-pipe,
  Which by some little help of derivation,
  Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration. 30

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FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 55:  ‘Thespis:’  the inventor of tragedy.]

* * * * *

XXVII.

PROLOGUE TO “THE LOYAL GENERAL;”

BY MR TATE, 1680.

  If yet there be a few that take delight
  In that which reasonable men should write;
  To them alone we dedicate this night. 
  The rest may satisfy their curious itch
  With city-gazettes, or some factious speech,
  Or whate’er libel, for the public good,
  Stirs up the shrove-tide crew to fire and blood. 
  Remove your benches, you apostate pit,
  And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;
  Go back to your dear dancing on the rope, 10
  Or see, what’s worse, the Devil and the Pope. 
  The plays that take on our corrupted stage,
  Methinks, resemble the distracted age;
  Noise, madness, all unreasonable things,
  That strike at sense, as rebels do at kings.