EPILOGUE

SPOKEN BY MRS. ELLEN, WHEN SHE WAS TO BE CARRIED OFF DEAD BY THE BEARERS

[To the Bearer.] Hold, are you mad? damn'd confounded dog, you I am to rise, and speak the epilogue. [To the Audience.] I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye, I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly. Sweet ladies, be not frighted, I'll be civil; I'm what I was, a little harmless devil: For after death, we sprites have just such

PROLOGUES, EPILOGUES, AND SONGS FROM THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA BY THE SPANIARDS

[This, Dryden's most famous heroic play, is divided into two parts, which seem to have been presented on successive days. It was first acted at some time between May 8, 1670, when a son was born to Nell Gwyn, the chief actress in the play, and February 20, 1671, when it was entered on the Stationers' Register (Malone, I, 1, 94). The first edition is dated 1672. The second song is printed also in Westminster Drollery; or, a Choice Collection of the Newest Songs and Poems. 1671, under the title, A Song at the King's House (the Theater Royal). The first song is twice printed in the same collection, once under the title, A Vision, and once under the same title as the other song.]

PROLOGUE

TO THE FIRST PART

SPOKEN BY

MRS. ELLEN GWYN

IN A BROAD-BRIMM'D HAT, AND WAIST-BELT THIS jest was first of t'other house's making, And, five times tried, has never fail'd of

taking;

If they, thro' sickness, seldom did appear, Pity the virgins of each theater:

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For, at both houses, 't was a sickly year! And pity us, your servants, to whose cost, In one such sickness, nine whole months are lost.

Their stay, he fears, has ruin'd what he writ:

Long waiting both disables love and wit. They thought they gave him leisure to do well;

But, when they forc'd him to attend, he fell!

Yet, tho' he much has fail'd, he begs, to-day, You will excuse his unperforming play: Weakness sometimes great passion does

THEY who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,

Turn critics, out of mere revenge and spite: A playhouse gives 'em fame; and up there starts,

From a mean fifth-rate wit, a man of parts. (So common faces on the stage appear; We take 'em in, and they turn beauties here.)

Our author fears those critics as his fate; And those he fears, by consequence, must hate,

For they the traffic of all wit invade,
As scriv❜ners draw away the bankers' trade.
Howe'er, the poet's safe enough to-day,
They cannot censure an unfinish'd play.
But, as when vizard-mask appears in pit,
Straight every man who thinks himself a
wit

Perks up, and, managing his comb with grace,

With his white wig sets off his nut-brown face;

That done, bears up to th' prize, and views each limb,

To know her by her rigging and her trim; Then, the whole noise of fops to wagers go: "Pox on her, 't must be she;" and: "Damme, no!".

Just so, I prophesy, these wits to-day Will blindly guess at our imperfect play;

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Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;

And they have kept it since, by being dead. But, were they now to write, when critics weigh

Each line, and ev'ry word, throughout a play,

None of 'em, no, not Jonson in his height, Could pass, without allowing grains for weight.

Think it not envy, that these truths are told;

Our poet's not malicious, tho' he 's bold. 'T is not to brand 'em, that their faults are shown,

PROLOGUE SPOKEN THE FIRST DAY OF THE KING'S HOUSE ACTING AFTER THE FIRE

[The Theater Royal in Drury Lane was burnt on January 25, 1672. (See FitzGerald : A New History of the English Stage, 1882; vol. i, p. 137.) The King's Company in their distress moved to the old playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which had recently been vacated by their rivals, the Duke of York's Company, in favor of a new and gandy theater in Dorset Gardens; on February 26 they gave a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit without Money, for which Dryden wrote this prologue (Malone, I, 1, 76). The piece is printed anonymously in Westminster Drollery, the Second Part, 1672, and in Covent Garden Drollery, 1672; and, with Dryden's name, in Miscellany Poems, 1684, from which the present text and heading are taken.]

So shipwrack'd passengers escape to land, So look they, when on the bare beach they stand

Dropping and cold, and their first fear scarce o'er,

Expecting famine on a desart shore.

From that hard climate we must wait for bread,

Whence ev'n the natives, forc'd by hunger, fled.

Our stage does human chance present to