[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

fied

By engineers, have still some weaker side By the o'er-seen defendant unespied.

V

And with that art you make approaches now; Such skilful fury in assaults you show, That every poet without shame may bow.

VI

Ours therefore humbly would attend your doom,

If, soldier-like, he may have terms to come With flying colors and with beat of drum.

[The PROLOGUE goes out, and stays while a tune is play'd, after which he returns again.

SECOND PROLOGUE

19

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

30

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

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

But of so ill a mingle with the rest, As when a parrot's taught to break a jest.

Thus, aiming to be fine, they make a show, As tawdry squires in country churches do.

Things well consider'd, 't is so hard to make A comedy which should the knowing take, That our dull poet, in despair to please, Does humbly beg, by me, his writ of ease. "T is a land tax, which he 's too poor to pay; You therefore must some other impost lay.

Would

40

you but change, for serious plot and

PROLOGUE, EPILOGUE, AND SONGS FROM SIR MARTIN MAR-ALL

Or, the FEIGN'D INNOCENCE

[This comedy is an adaptation of Molière's L'Etourdi. Downes states that the Duke of Newcastle gave Dryden a bare translation from Molière, which our poet adapted for the English stage. Pepys saw the play on August 16, 1667, when he terms it "the new play acted yesterday made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as everybody says, corrected by Dryden." It was entered on the Stationers' Register June 24, 1668 (Malone, I, 1, 93), as the Duke's play, and published anonymously in that year. Dryden's name did not appear on the title-page until 1691.

The first song is printed also in Westminster Drollery; or, a Choice Collection of the Newest Songs and Poems, 1671.]