[This comedy was by Thomas Shadwell. Two speeches by Lump, in the first act, indicate that it was first acted on March 21, 1678. It was first printed in the next year. After his quarrel with Shadwell, Dryden gave this same prologue to Aphra Behn for her tragicomedy The Widow Ranter, or The History of Bacon in Virginia, published in 1690. The present text is from the first edition of Shadwell's play.]

HEAV'N Save ye, gallants, and this hopeful age!

Y' are welcome to the downfall of the

Should men be rated by poetic rules,
Lord, what a poll would there be rais'd
from fools!

Meantime poor wit prohibited must lie,
As if 't were made some French commodity.
Fools you will have, and rais'd at vast ex-
pense;

And yet, as soon as seen, they give offense. Time was, when none would cry: "That oaf was me !"

But now you strive about your pedigree: Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down, But there's a muss of more than half the town.

20

Each one will challenge a child's part at least,

A sign the family is well increas'd.

Of foreign cattle there's no longer need, When w' are supplied so fast with English breed.

Well! flourish, countrymen; drink, swear, and roar;

Let every freeborn subject keep his whore;
And, wand'ring in the wilderness about,
At end of forty years not wear her out.
But when you see these pictures, let none
dare

30

To own beyond a limb or single share;
For where the punk is common, he's a sot
Who needs will father what the parish got.

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO CEDIPUS

[This tragedy, by Dryden and Lee, was probably acted in August, 1678, since the Woolen Act (30th Charles II cap. 3), mentioned in the last line of the prologue, went into effect on the first of that month. It was printed the next year. The prologue and epilogue are without doubt by Dryden.]

PROLOGUE

WHEN Athens all the Grecian state did guide,

And Greece gave laws to all the world beside;

Then Sophocles with Socrates did sit, Supreme in wisdom one, and one in wit: And wit from wisdom differ'd not in those, But as 't was sung in verse, or said in prose. Then, Edipus, on crowded theaters,

But mark their feasts, you shall behold such pranks;

The Pope says grace, but 't is the Devil gives thanks.

PROLOGUE TO THE LOYAL GENERAL

[This tragedy, by Nahum Tate, was probably acted in 1679; it was published in 1680, being entered on the Term Catalogue for Hilary Term (February) of that year. Dryden's prologue was reprinted in the third edition (1702) of Miscellany Poems, the First Part, where it is called simply A Prologue written by Mr. Dryden.]

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 Shrovetide 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

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!
The style of forty-one our poets write,
And you are grown to judge like forty-
eight.

Such censures our mistaking audience make,

That 't is almost grown scandalous to take ! They talk of fevers that infect the brains, 20 But nonsense is the new disease that reigns. Weak stomachs, with a long disease oppress'd,

Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest. Therefore thin nourishment of farce ye choose,

Decoctions of a barley-water Muse:
A meal of tragedy would make ye sick,
Unless it were a very tender chick.
Some scenes in sippets would be worth our
time;

[This prologue is here reprinted from Miscellany Poems, 1684. It was written for an Oxford production of Lee's Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow, a tragedy first published in 1675 (see Term Catalogue for Michaelmas Term (November), 1675; the edition is dated 1676), and appeared in an edition of that play in 1681. This text varies somewhat from that included in Miscellany Poems, which Dryden probably revised for publication.]

THESPIS, 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 Eschylus, 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 't is the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reforma-
tion;

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And few years hence, if anarchy goes on, Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,

Knock out a tub with preaching once a

day,