And to their cell of store his flood convey'd; The commonwealth broke up, distracted go, And in wild haste their loaded mates o'erthrow: Ev'n so our scatter'd guests confus'dly meet With boil'd, bak'd, roast, all justling in the street; Dejected all, and ruefully dismay'd, For shekel, without treat, or treason paid. 930 Sedition's dark eclipse now fainter shows, More bright each hour the royal planet grows, Of force the clouds of envy to disperse, That turn'd the doubtful scale of David's fate; The rest of that illustrious band rehearse, Immortaliz'd in laurel'd Asaph's verse: Hard task! yet will not I thy flight recall, View heav'n, and then enjoy thy glorious fall. 940 That no Achitophel thy ruin boast: Israel too much in one such wreck has lost. Ev'n envy must consent to Helon's worth, Whose soul (tho' Egypt glories in his birth) Could for our captive ark its zeal retain, And Pharaoh's altars in their pomp disdain: To slight his gods was small; with nobler pride, He all th' allurements of his court defied: What acts of favor in his province fall, 1010 Our list of nobles next let Amri grace, Whose merits claim'd the Abbethdin's high place; Who, with a loyalty that did excel, Thy laurel grove no envy's flash can blast; And, when our Sion virgins sing, their theme. Our jubilees shall with thy verse be grac'd; The song of Asaph shall for ever last! How fierce his satire loos'd; restrain'd, how tame; How tender of th' offending young man's fame! 1050 PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE KING AND QUEEN AT THE OPENING OF THEIR THEATER [These two pieces, with heading on which the above is modeled, were published as a broadside in 1683. They were reprinted in the third edition, 1702, of Miscellany Poems, the First Part, the first of them having the title, A Prologue to the King and Queen, upon the Union of the two Companies in the year 1689 [sic]. In 1682 the King's Company and the Duke's Company, which had been rivals for over twenty years. joined their forces. The articles of union (reprinted in FitzGerald: A New History of the English Stage, 1882; vol. i, pp. 154-158) are dated May 14, 1682; but the united companies did not give their first representation until November 16 (Malone, I, 1, 120, on the authority of a note by Luttrell).] ["In the year of his Majesty's happy Restoration," Dryden writes in his Vindication of The Duke of Guise, "the first play I undertook was The Duke of Guise, as the fairest way which the Act of Indemnity had then left us of setting forth the rise of the late rebellion. As this was my first essay, so it met with the fortune of an unfinish'd piece; that is to say, it was damn'd in private, by the advice of some friends to whom I shew'd it; who freely told me that it was an excellent subject, but not so artificially wrought as they could have wish'd." In 1682, at the request of Lee, Dryden accepted his aid in completing this play, which was ready for acting before midsummer, though, owing to objections from the government, the first performance did not take place until November 30 (Malone, I, 1, 120, probably on manuscript authority). As is obvious from the following pieces, The Duke of Guise was a political play, directed against the Whig party. The prologue and the first of the two epilogues are assigned to Dryden in the first edition of the play, 1683. They were also printed in a broadside of the same date, which contains, in addition, the second epilogue. The song occurs early in the second scene of the fifth act, a portion of the play which Dryden claims as his own.] |