ALL FOR LOVE OR THE WORLD WELL LOST A TRAGEDY WRITTEN IN IMITATION OF SHAKSPERE'S STYLE Facile est verbum aliquod ardens (ut ita dicam) notare, idque restinctis animorum incendiis irridere. CICERO, Orator, 27. ALL FOR LOVE was first printed in 1678; other quarto editions followed in 1692 and 1696. These quartos are cited as Q1Q2Q3. The Folio of 1701 (F) was printed from Q3, and Q3 from Q2; Q1 furnishes the only authentic text. For illustrations of this fact see notes on p. 231, 1. 21; p. 244, 1. 216; p. 253, 11. 96, 122; p. 267, 11. 206-10; p. 297, 1. 323. то THE RIGHT HONORABLE THOMAS, EARL OF DANBY VISCOUNT LATIMER, AND BARON OSBORNE OF KIVETON, IN YORKSHIRE ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONORABLE PRIVY COUNCIL AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &C. MY LORD, THE gratitude of poets is so troublesome a virtue to great men that you are often in danger of your own benefits: for you are threaten'd with some epistle, and not suffer'd to do good in quiet, or to compound for their silence whom you have oblig'd. Yet, I confess, I neither am nor ought to be surpris'd at this indulgence; for your Lordship has the same right to favor poetry which the great and noble have ever had. Carmen amat, quisquis carmine digna gerit. There is somewhat of a tie in nature betwixt those who are born 10 for worthy actions, and those who can transmit them to posterity; and tho' ours be much the inferior part, it comes at least within the verge of alliance; nor are we unprofitable members of the commonwealth, when we animate others to those virtues which we copy and describe from you. "Tis indeed their interest, who endeavor the subversion of governments, to discourage poets and historians; for the best which can happen to them is to be forgotten. But such who, under kings, are the fathers of their country, and by a just and prudent ordering of affairs preserve it, have the same reason to cherish the chroniclers of their actions, as they have to lay up in safety the deeds and evidences of their estates; 20 for such records are their undoubted titles to the love and reverence of after ages. Your Lordship's administration has already taken up a considerable part of the English annals; and many of its most happy years are owing to it. His Majesty, the most knowing judge of men, and the best master, has acknowledg'd the ease and benefit he receives in the incomes of his treasury, which you found not only disorder'd, but exhausted. All things were in the confusion of a chaos, without form or method, if not reduc'd beyond it, even to annihilation; so that you had not only to separate the jarring elements, but (if that boldness of expression might be allow'd me) to create them. Your enemies had so embroil'd the management of your office that they look'd on your advancement as the instrument of your ruin. And, as if the clogging of the revenue, and the confusion of accounts, which you found in your entrance, were not sufficient, they added their own weight of malice to the public calamity, by forestalling the credit which should cure it. Your friends on the other side were only capable of pitying, but not of aiding you; no farther help or counsel was remaining to you, but what was founded on yourself; and that indeed was your security; for your diligence, your constancy, and your prudence, wrought more surely within, 10 when they were not disturb'd by any outward motion. The highest virtue is best to be trusted with itself; for assistance only can be given by a genius superior to that which it assists; and 'tis the noblest kind of debt, when we are only oblig'd to God and nature. This then, my Lord, is your just commendation, that you have wrought out yourself a way to glory, by those very means that were design'd for your destruction: you have not only restor'd, but advanc'd the revenues of your master, without grievance to the subject; and, as if that were little yet, the debts of the exchequer, which lay heaviest both on the crown and on private persons, have by your conduct been establish'd in a certainty of satisfaction. An 20 action so much the more great and honorable, because the case was without the ordinary relief of laws; above the hopes of the afflicted, and beyond the narrowness of the treasury to redress, had it been manag'd by a less able hand. 'Tis certainly the happiest, and most unenvied part of all your fortune, to do good to many, while you do injury to none; to receive at once the prayers of the subject, and the praises of the prince; and, by the care of your conduct, to give him means of exerting the chiefest (if any be the chiefest) of his royal virtues, his distributive justice to the deserving, and his bounty and compassion to the wanting. The disposition of princes towards their people cannot better be dis30 cover'd than in the choice of their ministers; who, like the animal spirits betwixt the soul and body, participate somewhat of both natures, and make the communication which is betwixt them. A king, who is just and moderate in his nature, who rules according to the laws, whom God made happy by forming the temper of his soul to the constitution of his government, and who makes us happy, by assuming over us no other sovereignty than that wherein our welfare and liberty consists; a prince, I say, of so excellent a character, and so suitable to the wishes of all good men, could not better have convey'd himself into his people's apprehensions, than in your Lordship's person; who so lively express the same 40 virtues, that you seem not so much a copy, as an emanation of him. Moderation is doubtless an establishment of greatness; but there is a steadiness of temper which is likewise requisite in a minister of state; so equal a mixture of both virtues that he may stand like an isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of arbitrary power and lawless anarchy. The undertaking would be difficult to any but an extraordinary genius, to stand at the line, and to divide the limits; to pay what is due to the great representative of the nation, and neither to inhance, nor to yield up, the undoubted prerogatives of the crown. These, my Lord, are the 29. better be] QqF. be better SsM. |