News is your food, and you enough provide,
Both for yourselves, and all the world befide.
One theatre there is of vaft resort,

Which whilome of Requests was called the Court;
But now the great Exchange of News 'tis hight,
And full of hum and buz from noon 'till night.
Up ftairs 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 ftill is fed

By villains in your own dull island bred.
Would you return to us, we dare engage
To fhew you better rogues upon the flage.
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 fmelling a perfume to make you die ;
is
A trick would make you lay your fnuff-box by.
Murder's a trade, fo known and practis'd there,
That 'tis infallible as is the chair.

But, mark their feast, you shall behold such pranks;
The pope fays grace, but 'tis the devil gives thanks.

PROLOGUE

то

SOPHONIS BA, at OXFORD, 1680.

HESPIS, the first profeffor of our art,

TH

At country wakes, fung ballads from a cart. Το prove this true, if Latin be no trespass, Dicitur & plauftris vexiffe Poemata Thefpis. But Æfchylus, fays Horace in fome page, Was the firft mountebank that trod the stage: Yet Athens never knew your learned sport Of toffing 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 fhall 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 fhall go to pot, For difbelieving of a Popish-plot : Your poets fhall be us'd like infidels, And worst the author of the Oxford bells: Nor fhould we 'scape the sentence, to depart, E'en in our first original, a cart.

No zealous brother there would want a ftone,
To maul us cardinals, and pelt pope Joan :
Religion, learning, wit, would be fuppreft,
Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast :
Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,
As chief fupporters of the triple crown;
And Ariftotle's for deftruction ripe;
Some fay, he call'd the foul an organ-pipe,
Which, by fome little help of derivation,
Shall then be prov'd a pipe of infpiration.

A PROLOGUE.

IF

yet there be a few that take delight

In that which reasonable men fhould write;

To them alone we dedicate this night.

The reft may fatisfy their curious itch
With city-gazettes, or fome factious speech,
Or whate'er libel, for the public good,

Stirs up
the fhrove-tide crew to fire and blood.
Remove your benches, you apoftate pit,

And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;

1

Go back to your dear dancing on the rope,
Or fee what's worse, the devil and the

pope.

The plays that take on our corrupted stage,
Methinks, resemble the distracted age;
Noife, 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 cenfures our mistaking audience make,
That 'tis almoft grown fcandalous to take.
They talk of fevers that infect the brains!;A
But nonfenfe is the new difeafe that reigns.)
Weak stomachs, with a long disease oppreft, w
Cannot the cordials of ftrong wit digeft. '.
Therefore thin nourishment of farce ye choofe,!
Decoctions of a barley-water mufe:

A meal of tragedy would make ye fick, OLS
Unless it were a very tender chick

and all Some scenes in fippets would be worth our time Those would go down; fome love that's poach'd in rhime;

If these should fail----

We must lie down, and, after all our coft,

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.

EPILOGUE

ΤΟ A in ob dieder

}

TRAGEDY call'd TAMERLANE.

L

[By Mr. SAUNDERS } [ kollat on eurolabusdì eve

ADIES, the beardlefs author of this day

Commends to you the fortune of his play. A woman wit has often gracid the stage; But he's the first boy-poet of our age.. Early as is the year his fancies blow, Like young Narciffus peeping thro the fnow. Thus Cowley bloffom'd foon, yet flourish'd long; This is as forward, and may prove as strong. Youth with the fair fhould always favor find, Or we are damn'd diffemblers of our kind. What's all this love they put into our parts ? 'Tis but the pit-a-pat of two young hearts. Should hag and grey-beard make fuch tender mean, pin ch

Faith, you'd e'en trust them to themselves alone, And cry, Let's go, here's nothing to be done. Since Love's our bufinefs, as 'tis your delight, The young, who beft can practise, beft can write.