Our Popes and friars on one side offend,
     And yet, alas! the city’s not our friend: 
     The city neither like us nor our wit,
     They say their wives learn ogling in the pit;
     They’re from the boxes taught to make advances,
     To answer stolen sighs and naughty glances. 
     We virtuous ladies some new ways must seek,
     For all conspire our playing trade to break.

But although the citizens declined to frequent even the plays written on their own side of the question, Armstrong, and the personal followers of Monmouth, were of a gayer complexion, and doubtless, as they were not inferior to the courtiers in the licence assumed by the age, formed the principal part of the audience at the protestant plays.  The discovery of the Rye-house Plot broke the strength of this part of the confederacy, and the odium attending that enterprise rendered their opposition to the court in public assemblies both fruitless and dangerous.

PROLOGUE

WRITTEN BY MR DRYDEN.

SPOKEN BY MR SMITH.

Our play’s a parallel:  the Holy League
Begot our Covenant:  Guisards got the whig: 
Whate’er our hot-brained sheriffs did advance,
Was, like our fashions, first produced in France;
And, when worn out, well scourged, and banished there,
Sent over, like their godly beggars, here. 
Could the same trick, twice played, our nation gull? 
It looks as if the devil were grown dull;
Or served 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 changed, our nasty nation
Chews its own excrements, the Association[1]. 
’Tis true, we have not learned their poisoning way,
For that’s a mode but newly come in play;
Resides, your drug’s uncertain to prevail,
But your true protestant can never fail
With that compendious instrument, a flail[2]. 
Go on, and bite, even 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 two-pence 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 peace 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;