OR, THE MAIDEN QUEEN

[Pepys saw "The Maiden Queen, a new play of Dryden's," on March 2, 1667. The play was entered on the Stationers' Register on August 7 of that year (Malone, I, 1, 69); the first edition is dated 1668. The epilogue printed with the play was "by a person of honor;" that given below is taken from The Covent Garden Drollery, a small miscellany published in 1672, which contains a large number of prologues and epilogues, some of them known to be by Dryden. There is, however, no absolute proof that the present epilogue is his work. The song is one which the Maiden Queen "made of" her lover Philocles and call'd... Secret Love."]

PROLOGUE

I

He who writ this, not without pains and thought

From French and English theaters has brought

Th' exactest rules by which a play is wrought:

II

The unities of action, place, and time;
The scenes unbroken; and a mingled chime
Of Jonson's humor with Corneille's rhyme.

III

But while dead colors he with care did lay, He fears his wit or plot he did not weigh, Which are the living beauties of a play.

IV

Plays are like towns, which, howe'er forti

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I had forgot one half, I do protest,
And now am sent again to speak the rest.
He bows to every great and noble wit;
But to the little Hectors of the pit
Our poet's sturdy, and will not submit.
He'll be beforehand with 'em, and not stay
To see each peevish critic stab his play:
Each puny censor, who, his skill to boast,
Is cheaply witty on the poet's cost.
No critic's verdict should of right stand
good;

They are excepted all, as men of blood; And the same law should shield him from their fury

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Which has excluded butchers from a jury. You'd all be wits

But writing 's tedious, and that way may fail;