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Know mortals, that the men the gods moft love,
In hard and dang'rous arts they always prove;
When men live brave at first, then fall to crimes,
Their bad is chronicle to future times :

For who begins good arts, and not proceeds;
He but goes backward in all noble deeds.

Goffe's Couragious Turk.
Not to promote what we do once commence,.
Argues a weakness, and a diffidence.

When great ones, for great actions are bound,
And failed far i'th' voyage, they will not
Turn for their honour, but be rather drown'd;
Nor can, perhaps: as thofe the gulph have shot:
Or not begin, or finish, is a rule,

As well in Mars's, as in Venus' school.

Nerves would be cramp'd, the lazy blood would freeze,
Limbs be unactive, fhould they longer lie;
And if they ftill fhould facrifice to ease,
Valour would fall into a lethargy:

Dull lakes are choak'd with melancholick mud;
Motions do clear, and christallize a flood.

Aleyn's Poitiers.

Revolt is recreant, when purfuit is brave ;
Never to faint, doth purchase what we crave.

Machen's Dumb Knight.

Attempt the end, and never ftand to doubt ;
Nothing's fo hard, but fearch will find it out.

PETITION.

Herrick

You hurt your innocence, fuing for the guilty.
Johnson's Volpone.

Virtue is either lame, or not at all;
And love a facrilege, and not a faint,
When it bars up the way to mens petitions.

Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian.

How wretched is that fuppliant, who must
Make fuit to obtain that, which he fears to take?
Richard Brome's Mad couple well match’d.

They have robb'd me

Of all means to prefer my juft complaints
With any promifing hope to gain a hearing;
Much lefs redress: Petitions not fweetned

With gold, are but unfav'ry; oft refus'd:
Or if receiv'd, are pocketted, not read.
A fuitor's fwelling tears by the glowing beams
Of chol❜rick authority are dry'd up,

Before they fall; or if feen, never pity'd.

Maffinger's Emperor of the Eaft.

Petitions fhall be drawn,

Humble in form; but fuch for matter

As the bold Macedonian youth would fend
To men he did despise for luxury:

The first begets opinion of the world,

Which looks not far, but on the outfide dwells:
Th' other enforces courage in our own;

For bold demands must boldly be maintain'd.

Suckling's Brennoralt.

PLAYER.

Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of paffion,
Could force his foul fo to his own conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage warm'd:
Tears in his eyes, diftraction in his afpect,
A broken voice, and his whole function futing
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing?
For Hecuba?

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba

That he fhould weep for her? what would he do,
Had he the motive, and the cue for paffion,

That I have? he would drown the ftage with tears,
And cleave the gen'ral ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculty of eyes and ears.

Shakespear's Hamlet.

1. Speech

1. Speak the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd
It to you, trippingly on the tongue. But
If you mouth it, as many of our players
Do, I had as liefe, the town crier had
Spoke my lines and do not faw the air too
Much with your hand thus, but use all gently;
For in the very torrent, tempeft, and,
As I may fay, whirl-wind of your paffion,
You must acquire, and beget a temp'rance
That may give it fmoothness. Oh, it offends
Me to the foul, to hear a robuftious
Periwig-pated fellow tear a paffion

To tatters, to very rags, to split the

Ears of the groundlings: who, for the most part,
Are capable of nothing, but inexplicable

Dumb fhews, and noife: I could have fuch a fellow
Whip'd for o'erdoing termagant; it

Out-Herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

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1. Be not too tame neither; but let your own Difcretion be your tutor, fute the action

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To the word, the word to the action;
With this special obfervance, that you o'erftep
Not the modefty of nature; for any
Thing fo overdone is from the purpose
Of playing; whofe end, both at the first and
Now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror
Up to nature; to fhew virtue her own
Feature, fcorn her own image, and the very
Age and body of the time, his form and
Preffure. Now this o'erdone, or come tardy
Of, tho' it makes th' unskilful laugh, cannot
But make the judicious grieve: the cenfure
Of which one, muft in your allowance o'er weigh
A whole theatre of others. Oh, there be
Players that I've seen play, and heard others
Praise, and that highly, not to fpeak it prophanely,
That neither having the accent of chriftian,

Nor

Nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man,
Have fo ftrutted, and bellow'd, that I have
Thought fome of nature's journeymen had made
Men, and not made them well; they imitated
Humanity fo abominably!

2. I hope, we have reform'd that indiff'rently
With us,

1. Oh! reform it altogether.

And let those that play your clowns, speak no more
Than is fet down for them: for there be of

Them, that will themselves laugh, to fet on fome
Quantity of barren fpectators to

Laugh too; though, in the mean time, fome
Neceffary queftion of the play be

Then to be confider'd: that's villainous;

And fhews a moft pitiful ambition

In the fool that uses it.

-Players

Shakespear's Hamlet.

Were never more uncertain in their lives:

They know not when to play, where to play, nor
What to play; not when to play, for fearful fools;
Where to play, for puritan fools
; nor what

To play, for critical fools.

Middleton's Mad World my Mafters. They abuse our scene,

And fay we live by vice, indeed 'tis true ;

As the phyficians by diseases do,

Only to cure them: they do live we fee
Like cooks by pamp'ring prodigality;
Which are our fond accufers.

On the stage,

We fet an ufurer to tell this age
How ugly looks his foul; a prodigal,
Is taught by us how far from liberal
His folly bears him. Boldly I dare fay,
There has been more by us in fome one play
Laugh'd into wit, and virtue, than hath been
By twenty tedious lectures drawn from fin,

And

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And foppifh humours: hence the caufe doth rife,
Men are not won by th' ears, fo well as eyes.
Randolph's Mufes Looking-Glafs.
"Tis better in a play

Be Agamemnon, than himfelf indeed;
How oft with danger of the field befet,
Or with home mutinies, would he unbe
Himself? or over cruel altars weeping,
Wish, that with putting off a vizard, he
Might his true inward forrow lay afide?
The fhews of things are better than themselves :
How doth it stir this aiery part of us,

To hear our poets tell imagin'd fights,
And the strange blows that feigned courage gives?
When I'd Achilles hear upon the stage

Speak honour, and the greatness of his foul,
Methinks, I too could on a Phrygian spear
Run boldly, and make tales for after times:
But when we come to act it in the deed,
Death mars, this bravery, and th' ugly fears
Of the other world, fit on the proudest brow;
And boating valour lofeth it's red cheek.

PLEASURE.
Eafe dulls the fp'rit; each drop of fond delight
Allays the thirst, which glory doth excite.

Nero.

Mirror for Magiftrates.

All these fond pleafures, if fond things

Deferve fo good a name,

Should not feduce a noble mind,

To stain itself with fhame.

The time fhall come, when all these fame,

Which feem fo rich with joy :

Like tyrants, shall torment thy mind,

And vex thee with annoy.

Brandon's Octavia to Antonius.

Pleasure is like a building, the more high,

The

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