One theatre there is of vast resort,
Which, whilom, of Requests was call'd the Court;
But now the great Exchange of News 'tis hight,
And full of hum and buz from noon till night:
Upstairs and down you run, as for a race,
And each man wears three nations in his face;
So big you look, tho' claret you retrench,
That, arm'd with bottled ale, you huff the French.
But all your entertainment still is fed.
By villains in your own dull island bred.
Would you return to us, we dare engage
To shew you better rogues upon the stage,
You know no poison but plain ratsbane here;
Death's more refin'd and better bred elsewhere.
They have a civil way in Italy,
By smelling a perfume, to make you die;
A trick would make you lay your snuff-box by. J ·
Murder 's a trade so known and practis'd there,
That 'tis infallible as is the Chair:
But, mark their feast, you shall behold such pranks;
The Pope says grace, but 'tis the Devil gives thanks.
PROLOGUE TO SOPHONISBA.
AT OXFORD, 1680.
HESPIS, 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 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation:
And, few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne;
Knock out a tub, with preaching, once a day;
And ev'ry prayer be longer than a play.
Then all your Heathen wits shall go to pot,
For disbelieving of a Popish-plot.
Your poets shall he us'd like Infidels,
And, worst, the author of the Oxford Bells:
Nor should we 'scape the sentence, to depart,
E'en in our first original, a cart.
No zealous brother there would want a stone,
To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan.
Religion, learning, wit, would be supprest,
Rags of the Whore, and trappings of the Breast.
Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,
As chief supporters of the triple crown;
And Aristotle's for destruction ripe;
Some say, he call'd the soul an Organ-pipe,
Which by some little help of derivation,
Shall then be prov'd a pipe of inspiration.
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 Shrove-tide 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 rope,
Or see what's worse, the Devil and 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 'tis almost grown scandalous-to take.
They talk of fevers that infect the brains:
But nonsense is the new disease that reigns.
Weak stomachs, with a long disease opprest,
Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest.
Therefore thin nourishment of Farce
Decoctions of a barley-water Muse.
A meal of Tragedy would make you sick,
Unless it were at very tender chick.
Some scenes in sippets would be worth your time; Those would go down; some love that's poach'd If these should fail
[in rhyme : We must lie down, and, after all our cost,
Keep holiday, like watermen in frost;
While you turn players on the world's great stage, And act yourselves the farce of your own age.
THE fam'd Italian Muse, whose rhymes advance,
Orlando, and the Paladins of France,
Records that, when our wit and sense is flown,
'Tis lodg'd within the circle of the moon,
In earthen jars; which one, who thither soar'd,
Set to his nose, snuff'd up, and was restor❜d.
Whate'er the story be, the moral's true;
The wit we lost in Town, we find in you.
Our poets their fled parts may draw from hence,
And fill their windy heads with sober sense.
When London votes with Southwark's disagree,
Here
may they find their long-lost loyalty.
Her busy senates, to th' old cause inclin'd,
May snuff the votes their fellows left behind.
Your country neighbours, when their grain grows
May come, and find their last provision here: [dear,
Whereas we cannot much lament our loss,
Who neither carried back nor brought one cross.
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