Fran.  Why, I thank you, sweet gentlemen and ladies; this is a cordial to my drooping spirits:  I confess I was a little eclipsed; but I’ll cheer up with abundance of love, as they say.  Strike up, fiddles.

Lov.  That’s a good wench.

DANCE.

Trice.  This music and a little nod has recovered me.  I’ll in, and provide for the sack posset.

Non.  To bed, to bed; ’tis late.  Son Loveby, get me a boy to-night, and I’ll settle three thousand a-year upon him the first day he calls me grandsire.

Lov.  I’ll do my best, To make the bargain sure before I sleep.  Where love and money strike, the blow goes deep.

[Exeunt omnes.

EPILOGUE,

WHEN IT WAS FIRST ACTED.

The Wild Gallant has quite played out his game;
He’s married now, and that will make him tame;
Or if you think marriage will not reclaim him,
The critics swear they’ll damn him, but they’ll tame him. 
Yet, though our poet’s threatened most by these,
They are the only people he can please: 
For he, to humour them, has shown to-day,
That which they only like, a wretched play: 
But though his play be ill, here have been shown
The greatest wits, and beauties of the town;
And his occasion having brought you here,
You are too grateful to become severe. 
There is not any person here so mean,
But he may freely judge each act and scene: 
But if you bid him chuse his judges, then,
He boldly names true English gentlemen: 
For he ne’er thought a handsome garb or dress
So great a crime, to make their judgment less: 
And with these gallants he these ladies joins,
To judge that language, their converse refines. 
But if their censures should condemn his play,
Far from disputing, he does only pray
He may Leander’s destiny obtain: 
Now spare him, drown him when he comes again.

EPILOGUE,

WHEN REVIVED.

Of all dramatic writing, comic wit,
As ’tis the best, so ’tis most, hard to hit. 
For it lies all in level to the eye,
Where all may judge, and each defect may spy. 
Humour is that, which every day we meet,
And therefore known as every public street;
In which, if e’er the poet go astray,
You all can point, ’twas there he lost his way. 
But, what’s so common, to make pleasant too,
Is more than any wit can always do. 
For ’tis like Turks, with hen and rice to treat;
To make regalios out of common meat. 
But, in your diet, you grow savages: 
Nothing but human flesh your taste can please;
And, as their feasts with slaughtered slaves began,
So you, at each new play, must have a man. 
Hither you come, as to see prizes fought;
If no blood’s drawn, you cry, the prize is naught. 
But fools grow wary now; and, when they see