Prologue to the True Widow
Heaven save ye, gallants, and this hopeful age!
Y' are welcome to the downfall of the stage.
The fools have laboured long in their vocation,
And vice, the manufacture of the nation,
O'erstocks the town so much, and thrives so well,
That fops and knaves grow drugs, and will not sell.
In vain our wares on theatres are shown,
When each has a plantation of his own.
His cruse ne'er fails; for whatsoe'er he spends,
There's still God's plenty for himself and friends.
Should men be rated by poetic rules,
Lord, what a poll would there be raised from fools!
Meantime poor wit prohibited must lie,
As if 'twere made some French commodity.
Fools you will have, and raised at vast expense;
And yet, as soon as seen, they give offence.
Time was, when none would cry,—That oaf was me;
But now you strive about your pedigree.
Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down,
But there's a muss of more than half the town.
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poem by John Dryden
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To my Honor'd Friend, Dr. Charleton (excerpt)
The longest tyranny that ever sway'd
Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
Their free-born reason to the Stagirite,
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one supplied the state,
Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate;
Until 't was bought, like emp'ric wares, or charms,
Hard words seal'd up with Aristotle's arms.
Columbus was the first that shook his throne,
And found a temp'rate in a torrid zone:
The fev'rish air fann'd by a cooling breeze,
The fruitful vales set round with shady trees;
And guiltless men, who danc'd away their time,
Fresh as their groves, and happy as their clime.
Had we still paid that homage to a name,
Which only God and Nature justly claim,
The western seas had been our utmost bound,
Where poets still might dream the sun was drown'd:
And all the stars that shine in southern skies
Had been admir'd by none but savage eyes.
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poem by John Dryden
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Song Of A Scholar And His Mistress, Who, Being Crossed By Their Friends, Fell Mad For One Another; And Now First Meet In Bedlam
[Music within.]
The Lovers enter at opposite doors, each held by a keeper.
Phillis.
Look, look I see—I see my love appear!
’Tis he—’Tis he alone;
For, like him, there is none:
’Tis the dear, dear man, ’tis thee, dear.
Amyntas.
Hark! the winds war;
The foamy waves roar;
I see a ship afar:
Tossing and tossing, and making to the shore:
But what’s that I view,
So radiant of hue,
St. Hermo, St Hermo, that sits upon the sails?
Ah! No, no, no.
St. Hermo never, never shone so bright;'
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poem by John Dryden
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Epilogue to Henry II.
Thus you the sad catastrophe have seen,
Occasioned by a mistress and a queen.
Queen Eleanor the proud was French, they say;
But English manufacture got the day.
Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver;
Fair Rosamond was but her nom de guerre.
Now tell me, gallants, would you lead your life
With such a mistress, or with such a wife?
If one must be your choice, which d' ye approve,
The curtain lecture, or the curtain love?
Would ye be godly with perpetual strife,
Still drudging on with homely Joan, your wife,
Or take your pleasure in a wicked way,
Like honest whoring Harry in the play?
I guess your minds; the mistress would be taking,
And nauseous matrimony sent a packing.
The devil's in you all; mankind's a rogue;
You love the bride, but you detest the clog.
After a year, poor spouse is left i' the lurch,
And you, like Haynes, return to mother-church.
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poem by John Dryden
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Epitaph on the Monument of a Fair Maiden Lady, Who Died at Bath, and is There Interred
Below this marble monument is laid
All that heaven wants of this celestial maid.
Preserve, O sacred tomb, thy trust consigned;
The mould was made on purpose for the mind:
And she would lose, if, at the latter day,
One atom could be mixed with other clay;
Such were the features of her heavenly face,
Her limbs were formed with such harmonious grace:
So faultless was the frame, as if the whole
Had been an emanation of the soul;
Which her own inward symmetry revealed,
And like a picture shone, in glass annealed;
Or like the sun eclipsed, with shaded light;
Too piercing, else, to be sustained by sight.
Each thought was visible that rolled within;
As through a crystal case the figured hours are seen.
And heaven did this transparent veil provide,
Because she had no guilty thoughts to hide.
All white, a virgin-saint, she sought the skies,
For marriage, though it sullies not, it dyes.
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poem by John Dryden
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An Epilogue
You saw your wife was chaste, yet throughly tried,
And, without doubt, you are hugely edified;
For, like our hero, whom we showed to-day,
You think no woman true, but in a play.
Love once did make a pretty kind of show;
Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow;
But 'twas heaven knows how many years ago.
Now some small chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation.
In comedy your little selves you meet;
'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges Street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act those follies, poets toil to write!
The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly
To some new frisk of contrariety.
You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run,
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poem by John Dryden
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Prologue to the Princess of Cleves
Ladies! (I hope there's none behind to hear)
I long to whisper something in your ear:
A secret, which does much my mind perplex,—
There's treason in the play against our sex.
A man that's false to love, that vows and cheats,
And kisses every living thing he meets;
A rogue in mode,—I dare not speak too broad,—
One that—does something to the very bawd.
Out on him, traitor, for a filthy beast!
Nay, and he's like the pack of all the rest:
None of them stick at mark; they all deceive.
Some Jew has changed the text, I half believe;
Their Adam cozened our poor grandame Eve.
To hide their faults they rap out oaths, and tear;
Now, though we lie, we're too well bred to swear.
So we compound for half the sin we owe,
But men are dipt for soul and body too;
And, when found out, excuse themselves, pox cant them,
With Latin stuff, Perjuria ridet amantum.
I'm not book-learned, to know that word in vogue,
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poem by John Dryden
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A Prologue
Gallants, a bashful poet bids me say,
He's come to lose his maidenhead to-day.
Be not too fierce; for he's but green of age,
And ne'er, till now, debauched upon the stage.
He wants the suffering part of resolution,
And comes with blushes to his execution.
Ere you deflower his Muse, he hopes the pit
Will make some settlement upon his wit.
Promise him well, before the play begin;
For he would fain be cozened into sin.
'Tis not but that he knows you mean to fail;
But, if you leave him after being frail,
He'll have, at least, a fair pretence to rail;
To call you base, and swear you used him ill,
And put you in the new Deserters' Bill.
Lord, what a troop of perjured men we see;
Enow to fill another Mercury!
But this the ladies may with patience brook;
Theirs are not the first colours you forsook.
He would be loath the beauties to offend;
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poem by John Dryden
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Prologue To The University Of Oxford, 1674.
Poets, your subjects have their parts assign'd
To unbend, and to divert their sovereign's mind:
When tired with following nature, you think fit
To seek repose in the cool shades of wit,
And, from the sweet retreat, with joy survey
What rests, and what is conquer'd, of the way.
Here, free yourselves from envy, care, and strife
You view the various turns of human life:
Safe in our scene, through dangerous courts you go,
And, undebauch'd, the vice of cities know
Your theories are here to practice brought,
As in mechanic operations wrought;
And man, the little world, before you set,
As once the sphere[49] of crystal show'd the great.
Blest, sure, are you above all mortal kind,
If to your fortunes you can suit your mind:
Content to see, and shun, those ills we show,
And crimes on theatres alone to know.
With joy we bring what our dead authors writ,
And beg from you the value of their wit:
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poem by John Dryden
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Epilogue to The Husband His Own Cuckold
Like some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit,
So trembles a young poet at a full pit.
Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear,
And wonders how the devil he durst come there;
Wanting three talents needful for the place,
Some beard, some learning, and some little grace.
Nor is the puny poet void of care;
For authors, such as our new authors are,
Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare;
And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one,
But has as little as the very parson:
Both say, they preach and write for your instruction;
But 'tis for a third day, and for induction.
The difference is, that though you like the play,
The poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day;
But with the parson 'tis another case,
He, without holiness, may rise to grace;
The poet has one disadvantage more,
That if his play be dull, he's damned all o'er,
Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor.
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poem by John Dryden
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