PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO "THE ASSIGNATION. OR LOVE IN A NUNNERY." *

1672.

PROLOGUE.

PROLOGUES, like bells to churches, toll you in
With chiming verse, till the dull plays begin;
With this sad difference though of pit and pew,
You damn the poet, but the priest damns you:
But priests can treat you at your own expense,
And gravely call you fools without offence.
Poets, poor devils, have ne'er your folly shown,
But to their cost you proved it was their own:
For when a fop's presented on the stage,
Straight all the coxcombs in the town engage;
For his deliverance and revenge they join,
And grunt, like hogs, about their captive swine.
Your poets daily split upon this shelf:

You must have fools, yet none will have himself.
Or if in kindness you that leave would give,
No man could write you at that rate you live:
For some of you grow fops with so much haste,
Riot in nonsense, and commit such waste,
'Twould ruin poets should they spend so fast.
He who made this observed what farces hit,
And durst not disoblige you now with wit.
But, gentlemen, you overdo the mode;

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You must have fools out of the common road.
The unnatural strained buffoon is only taking;

No fop can please you now of God's own making.

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Pardon our poet, if he speaks his mind;

You come to plays with your own follies lined:

Small fools fall on you, like small showers, in vain ;

Your own oiled coats keep out all common rain.

You must have Mamamouchi, such a fop

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As would appear a monster in a shop; †
He'll fill your pit and boxes to the brim,

Where, rammed in crowds, you see yourselves in him.

* Dryden's comedy of "The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery," was produced in 1672, and was unsuccessfu! on the stage. It was published in 1673, with a dedication to Sir Charles Sedley, in which he admitted its bad reception. "It succeeded ill in the representation, against the opinion of many of the best judges of our age, to whom you know I read it, ere it was presented publicly. Whether the fault was in the play itself, or in the lameness of the action, or in the number of its enemies, who came resolved to damn it for the title, I will not now dispute." The title of "Love in a Nunnery" would have displeased Roman Catholics.

+ Another fling at Ravenscroft's play of "The Citizen turned Gentleman, or Mamamouchi " See note on last line of Epilogue to "Secret Love," p. 414. The outlandish words in the lines which follow are taken from that play. Ravenscroft revenged himself on Dryden in a Prologue to his play of "The Careless Lovers," produced in 1673, where he dwelt on the failure on the stage of The Assignation."

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Sure there's some spell our poet never knew,
In Hullibabilahde, and Chu, chu, chu;
But Marabarah sahem most did touch you;
That is, Oh how we love the Mamamouchi!
Grimace and habit sent you pleased away;
You damned the poet, and cried up the play.

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This thought had made our author more uneasy,
But that he hopes I'm fool enough to please ye.

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But here's my grief,-though nature, joined with art,
Have cut me out to act a fooling part,

Yet, to your praise, the few wits here will say,

'Twas imitating you taught Haynes to play.

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Or tales yet more ridiculous to hear,

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Vouched by their vicar of ten pound a-year,

Of nuns who did against temptation pray,
And discipline laid on the pleasant way:
Or that, to please the malice of the town,
Our poet should in some close cell have shown
Some sister, playing at content alone.
This they did hope; the other side did fear;
And both, you see, alike are cozened here.
Some thought the title of our play to blame;
They liked the thing, but yet abhorred the name:
Like modest punks, who all you ask afford,
But for the world they would not name that word.
Yet, if you'll credit what I heard him say,
Our poet meant no scandal in his play!
His nuns are good, which on the stage are shown,
And sure, behind our scenes you'll look for none.

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO

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"AMBOYNA, OR THE CRUELTIES OF THE DUTCH TO THE ENGLISH MERCHANTS.” *

1673. PROLOGUE.

As needy gallants in the scriveners' hands

Court the rich knave that gripes their mortgaged lands,

*Dryden's tragedy of "Amboyna" was produced at the Theatre Royal in 1673. during the Dutch war and its object was to feed and stimulate the national feeling against the Dutch. It was published in the same year, with a fulsome dedication to Lord Clifford, with the language of

The first fat buck of all the season's sent,
And keeper takes no fee in compliment;
The dotage of some Englishmen is such,
To fawn on those who ruin them, the Dutch.
They shall have all, rather than make a war
With those who of the same religion are.

The Straits, the Guinea trade, the herrings too,
Nay, to preserve them, they shall pickle you.
Some are resolved not to find out the cheat,

But, cuckold-like, love him who does the feat:
What injuries soe'er upon us fall,

Yet still the same religion answers all :
Religion wheedled you to civil war,

*

Drew English blood, and Dutchmen's now would spare.
Be gulled no longer; for you'll find it true,
They have no more religion, faith, than you;
Interest's the god they worship in their State;
And you, I take it, have not much of that.
Well, Monarchies may own religion's name,
But States are atheists in their very frame.
They share a sin, and such proportions fall
That, like a stink, 'tis nothing to them all.
How they love England, you shall see this day
No map shows Holland truer than our play:
Their pictures and inscriptions well we know ;
We may be bold one medal sure to show.
View then their falsehoods, rapine, cruelty;

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And think what once they were they still would be:

But hope not either language, plot, or art;

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'Twas writ in haste, but with an English heart:

And least hope wit; in Dutchmen that would be
As much improper as would honesty.

EPILOGUE.

A poet once the Spartans led to fight,

And made them conquer in the Muses' right;
So would our poet lead you on this day,
Showing your tortured fathers in his play.

To one well born the affront is worse, and more,
When he's abused and baffled by a boor.
With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do,
They've both ill nature and ill manners too.

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which Dryden's subsequent fierce attacks on Shaftesbury and on the public policy of this time, which was even more Clifford's than Shaftesbury's, are strangely inconsistent. See line 177 of “Absalom and Achitophel," and line 65 of "The Medal," and the notes on those passages on the subject of Dryden's gross self-contradiction in his invectives against Shaftesbury about the Dutch war. The mistake of all editors of Dryden in treating this Prologue and Epilogue as a reproduction with some additions of "A Satire on the Dutch," said to have been written by Dryden in 1662 "Astræa Redux," p. 14. The poem with that title has been exposed in the Introductory Note to first appeared in 1704. in the third volume of the "State Poems," and was clearly a bookseller's concoction from this Prologue and Epilogue.

*The word state is here used like republic, to denote a form of government without a king.

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Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation,
For they were bred ere manners were in fashion;
And their new commonwealth has set them free,
Only from honour and civility.

Venetians do not more uncouthly ride,
Than did their lubber state mankind bestride;
Their sway became them with as ill a mien
As their own paunches swell above their chin :
Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour,
And only two Kings' touch can cure the tumour.*
As Cato did his Afric fruits display,+

So we before your eyes their Indies lay:
All loyal English will, like him, conclude,

Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued!‡

*

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PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.§ 1673.

PROLOGUE.

Spoken by MR. HART at the acting of the "Silent Woman."

WHAT Greece, when learning flourished, only knew,

Athenian judges, you this day renew.

Here too are annual rites to Pallas done,
And here poetic prizes lost or won.

*The kings of England and France, now allied against the Dutch.

+ See "Annus Mirabilis," stanza 173, where the same allusion occurs, and the note on that passage.

Shaftesbury, in his speech to the two Houses, delivered in his character of Lord Chancellor at the opening of Parliament, February 5, 1673, said that Parliament had " 'judged aright, that at any rate delenda est Carthago, that government was to be brought down." He did not here say anything stronger than Dryden's,

"Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued:"

but he was afterwards, and to the end of his life, reproached for the delenda est Carthago, and Dryden became foremost in upbraiding him.

§ Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Robert Bell have both assigned a wrong date for this Prologue and Epilogue, which were composed for the King's Company of actors on a visit to Oxford in 1673. Both editors have proceeded on the erroneous supposition that the allusions in the Epilogue to machines and witches refer to Shadwell's "Lancashire Witches," produced at the theatre in Dorset Gardens in 1681; and as Hart retired from the stage in October 1681, Mr. Bell Sxes that year as the date. The special allusion to machines and witches is to a representation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" transformed into an opera in Dorset Gardens, in 1672. These two pieces are clearly those referred to by Dryden in his letter to Rochester in 1673. "I have sent your lordship a Prologue and Epilogue which I made for our players when they went down to Oxford. I hear they have succeeded and by the event your lordship will judge how easy 'tis to pass anything upon an University, and how gross flattery the learned will endure." They are printed in the "Miscellany Poems," 1684, just before the Frologue and Epilogue for Oxford of 1674.

A day which none but Jonson durst have wished to see.

Here they who long have known the useful stage

Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.

As your commissioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you sow;
In your Lyceum first themselves refined,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come,
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
The illiterate writer, empiric-like, applies
To minds diseased unsafe chance remedies:

The learned in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man;

Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause,

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No poor Dutch peasant, winged with all his fear,

Flies with more haste, when the French arms draw near,
Than we with our poetic train come down,

For refuge hither from the infected town :