This shop of truth and fancy, where we vow
    Not to act anything you disallow. 
    We will not dare at your strange votes to jeer,
    Or personate King PYM[154] with his state-fleer;
    Aspiring Catiline should be forgot,
    Bloody Sejanus, or whoe’er could plot
    Confusion ’gainst a state; the war betwixt
    The Parliament and just Harry the Sixth
    Shall have no thought or mention, ’cause their power
    Not only placed, but lost him in the Tower;
    Nor will we parallel, with least suspicion,
    Your synod with the Spanish inquisition. 
       All these, and such like maxims as may mar
    Your soaring plots, or show you what you are,
    We shall omit, lest our inventions shake them: 
    Why should the men be wiser than you make them? 
       We think there should not such a difference be
    ’Twixt our profession and your quality: 
    You meet, plot, act, talk high with minds immense;
    The like with us, but only we speak sense
    Inferior unto yours; we can tell how
    To depose kings, there we know more than you,
    Although not more than what we would; then we
    Likewise in our vast privilege agree;
    But that yours is the larger; and controls
    Not only lives and fortunes, but men’s souls,
    Declaring by an enigmatic sense
    A privilege on each man’s conscience,
    As if the Trinity could not consent
    To save a soul but by the parliament. 
    We make the people laugh at some strange show,
    And as they laugh at us, they do at you;
    Only i’ the contrary we disagree,
    For you can make them cry faster than we. 
    Your tragedies more real are express’d,
    You murder men in earnest, we in jest: 
    There we come short; but if you follow thus,
    Some wise men fear you will come short of us. 
       As humbly as we did begin, we pray,
    Dear schoolmasters, you’ll give us leave to play
    Quickly before the king comes; for we would
    Be glad to say you’ve done a little good
    Since you have sat:  your play is almost done
    As well as ours—­would it had ne’er begun. 
    But we shall find, ere the last act be spent,
    Enter the King, exeunt the Parliament.
    And Heigh then up we go! who by the frown
    Of guilty members have been voted down,
    Until a legal trial show us how
    You used the king, and Heigh then up go you!
    So pray your humble slaves with all their powers,
    That when they have their due, you may have yours.

Such was the petition of the suppressed players in 1642; but, in 1653, their secret exultation appears, although the stage was not yet restored to them, in some verses prefixed to RICHARD BROME’S Plays, by ALEXANDER BROME, which may close our little history.  Alluding to the theatrical people, he moralises on the fate of players:—­