WHO JUDGE OF MODERN PLAYS PRECISELY BY THE RULES OF THE ANCIENTS 1.
WHOEVER will regard poetic fury,
When it is once found Idiot by a jury,
And every pert and arbitrary fool
Can all poetic license over-rule;
Assume a barbarous tyranny to handle
The Muses, worse than Ostrogoth and Vandal;
Make them submit to verdict and report,
And stand or fall to the' orders of a court?
Much less be sentenced by the arbitrary
Proceedings of a witless plagiary,
That forges old records and ordinances
Against the right and property of fancies;
More false and nice, than weighing of the weather
To the' hundredth atom of the lightest feather,
Or measuring of air upon Parnassus,
With cylinders of Torricellian glasses;
Reduce all tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its antique theatre, a cart;
And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads
Of reverend choruses and episodes;
Reform and regulate a puppet-play,
According to the true and ancient way,
1 This warm invective was very probably occasioned by Mr. Rymer, historiographer to Charles II. who censured three tragedies of Beaumont and Fletcher; and who stigmatised some of Shakspeare's plays as bloody farces, and his heroes as jack-puddings.
That not an actor shall presume to squeak,
Unless he have a licence for't in Greek;
Nor Whittington henceforward sell his cat in
Plain vulgar English, without mewing Latin:
No pudding shall be suffer'd to be witty,
Unless it be in order to raise pity;
Nor devil in the puppet-play be' allow'd
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chance to❜ have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;
That other men may tremble, and take warning,
How such a fatal progeny they're born in;
For none but such for Tragedy are fitted,
That have been ruin'd only to be pitied;
And only those held proper to deter,
Who've had the' ill luck against their wills to err:
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,
Between morality and venial vices,
Are qualified to be destroy'd by Fate,
For other mortals to take warning at.
As if the antique laws of Tragedy
Did with our own municipal agree,
And served, like cobwebs, but to' ensnare the weak,
And give diversion to the great to break ;
To make a less delinquent to be brought
To answer for a greater person's fault,
And suffer all the worst, the worst approver
Can, to excuse and save himself, discover.
No longer shall Dramatics be confined
To draw true images of all mankind;
To punish in effigy criminals,
Reprieve the innocent, and hang the false;
But a club-law to execute and kill,
For nothing, whomsoe'er they please, at will,
To terrify spectators from committing
The crimes they did, and suffer'd-for unwitting.
These are the reformations of the Stage,
Like other reformations of the age,
On purpose to destroy all wit and sense,
As the' other did all law and conscience;
No better than the laws of British plays,
Confirm'd in the' ancient good King Howel's days,
Who made a general council regulate
Men's catching women by the-you know what;
And set down in the rubic at what time
It should be counted legal, when a crime,
Declare when 'twas, and when 'twas not a sin,
And on what days it went out or came in.
An English poet should be tried by' his peers,
And not by pedants and philosophers,
Incompetent to judge poetic fury,
As butchers are forbid to be' of a jury;
Besides the most intolerable wrong
To try their matters in a foreign tongue,
By foreign jurymen, like Sophocles,
Or Tales falser than Euripides;
When not an English native dares appear
To be a witness for the prisoner;
When all the laws they use to' arraign and try
The innocent and wrong'd delinquent by,
Were made by a foreign lawyer, and his pupils,
To put an end to all poetic scruples;
And by the' advice of vertuosi-Tuscans,
Determined all the doubts of socks and buskins ;
Gave judgment on all past and future plays,
As is apparent by Speroni's case,
Which Lope Vega first began to steal,
And after him the French filou Corneille ;
And since our English plagiaries nim,
And steal their far-fet criticisms from him,
And by an action falsely laid of Trover,
The lumber for their proper goods recover;
Enough to furnish all the lewd impeachers
Of witty Beaumont's poetry, and Fletcher's,
Who for a few misprisions of wit,
Are charged by those who ten times worse commit;
And for misjudging some unhappy scenes,
Are censured for 't with more unlucky sense;
When all their worst miscarriages delight,
And please more, than the best that pedants write.
ACTED BEFOre the duke of York, UPON HIS
BIRTH-DAY.
SIR, while so many nations strive to pay
The tribute of their glories to this day,
That gave them earnest of so great a sum
Of glory (from your future acts) to come,
And which you have discharged at such a rate,
That all succeeding times must celebrate;
We, that subsist by your bright influence,
And have no life but what we own from thence,
Come humbly to present you, our own way,
With all we have, (beside our hearts) a play.
But as devoutest men can pay no more
To deities than what they gave before,
We bring you only what your great commands
Did rescue for us from engrossing hands,
That would have taken our administration
Of all departed poets' goods i' the nation;
Or, like to lords of manors, seized all plays
That come within their reach, as wefts and strays;
And claim'd a forfeiture of all past wit;
But that your justice put a stop to it.
'Twas well for us, who else must have been glad
To' admit of all who now write new and bad;
For still the wickeder some authors write,
Others to write worse are encouraged by 't;
And though those fierce inquisitors of wit,
The critics, spare no flesh that ever writ ;
But just as tooth-drawers find, among the rout,
Their own teeth work, in pulling others out,
So they, decrying all of all that write,
Think to erect a trade of judging by 't.
Small poetry, like other heresies,
By being persecuted multiplies;
But here they're like to fail of all pretence,
For he that writ this play is dead long since,
And not within their power: for bears are said
To spare those that lie still, and seem but dead.
MADAM, the joys of this great day are due,
No less than to your royal Lord, to you ;
And while three mighty kingdoms pay your part,
You have, what's greater than them all, his heart;
|