Press me not further to explain myself; "Twill not become me, and may cause your trouble. Leon. Too well I understand her secret grief, [Aside. But dare not seem to know it.—Come, my fairest; [Exeunt. EPILOGUE.* THUS have my spouse and I informed the nation, Not with dull morals, gravely writ, like those, But by examples drawn, I dare to say, Though 'twas well offered, there was nothing done, To cut you off a sample of the stuff: He spared my shame, which you, I'm sure, would not, You sighed when I came in to break the sport, * [Spoken by Rhodophil.-ED.] THE ASSIGNATION. THIS play was unfortunate in the representation. It is needless, at the distance of more than a century, to investigate the grounds of the dislike of an audience, who, perhaps, could at the very time have given no good reason for their capricious condemnation of a play, not worse than many others which they received with applause. The author, in the dedication, hints at the "lameness of the action ;" but, as the poet and performers are nearly equally involved in the disgrace of a condemned piece, it is a very natural desire on either side to assign the cause of its failure to the imperfections of the other; of which there is a ludicrous representation in a dialogue betwixt the player and the poet in "Joseph Andrews." Another cause of its unfavourable reception seems to have been its second title of "Love in a Nunnery." Dryden certainly could, last of any man, have been justly suspected of an intention to ridicule the Duke of York and the Catholic religion; yet, as he fell under the same censure for the "Spanish Friar," it seems probable that such suspicions were actually entertained. The play certainly contains, in the present instance, nothing to justify them. In point of merit, “The Assignation" seems pretty much on a level with Dryden's other comedies; and certainly the spectators, who had received the blunders of Sir Martin Mar-all with such unbounded applause, might have taken some interest in those of poor Benito. Perhaps the absurd and vulgar scene, in which the prince pretends a fit of the colic, had some share in occasioning the fall of the piece. This inelegant jeu de théâtre is severely ridiculed in the “Rehearsal.” To one person, the damnation of this play seems to have afforded exquisite pleasure. This was Edward Ravenscroft, once a member of the Middle Temple,-an ingenious gentleman, of whose taste it may be held a satisfactory instance, that he deemed the tragedy of "Titus Andronicus” too mild for representation, and generously added a few more murders, rapes, and parricides, to that charnel-house of horrors.* His * In the prologue to this beautified edition, Ravenscroft modestly tells us : Like other poets, he'll not proudly scorn To own, that he but winnowed Shakespeare's corn: turn for comedy being at least equal to his success in the blood-stained buskin, Mr. Ravenscroft translated and mangled several of the more farcical French comedies, which he decorated with the lustre of his own great name. Amongst others which he thus appropriated, were the most extravagant and buffoon scenes in Molière's "Bourgeois Gentilhomme; in which Monsieur Jourdain is, with much absurd ceremony, created a Turkish Paladin; and where Molière took the opportunity to introduce an entrée de ballet, danced and sung by the Mufti, dervises, and others, in eastern habits. Ravenscroft's translation, entitled "The Citizen turned Gentleman," was acted in 1672, and printed in the same year; the jargon of the songs, like similar nonsense of our own day, seems to have been well received on the stage. Dryden, who was not always above feeling indignation at the bad taste and unjust preferences of the age, attacked Ravenscroft in the prologue to "The Assignation," as he had before, though less directly, in that of “ Marriage à la Mode.” Hence the exuberant and unrepressed joy of that miserable scribbler broke forth upon the damnation of Dryden's performance, in the following passage of a prologue to another of his pilfered performances, called "The Careless Lovers," acted, according to Langbaine, in the vacation succeeding the fall of "The Assignation," in 1673: An author did, to please you, let his wit run, In fine, the whole by you so much was blamed, To damn, at once, the poet and his play :+ But why was your rage just at that time shown, When what the author writ was all his own? Till then, he borrowed from romance, and did translate; ‡ And those plays found a more indulgent fate. *This looks as if there had been some ground for Dryden's censure upon the actors. + A flat parody on the lines in Dryden's prologue, referring to Mamamouchi : Grimace and habit sent you pleased away : You damned the poet, but cried up the play. It is somewhat remarkable, that the censure contained in what is above printed like verses recoils upon the head of the author, who never wrote a single original performance. Langbaine, the persecutor of all plagiarism, though he did not know very well in what it consisted, threatens to "pull off Ravenscroft's disguise, and discover the politic plagiary that lurks under |