Chapter XXI

In facing the formidable array of the Duchess of Newcastle’s plays, it may be well to begin with their Prologue, or rather with part of that Prologue. It is not the happiest of her poetical efforts, but as we have already mentioned even Dryden failing in a Prologue, we may well make excuses for the Duchess.

But noble readers, do not think my plays
Are such as have been writ in former days:
As Johnson,[175] Shakespeare, Beaumount, Fletcher writ,
Mine want their learning, reading, language, wit.
The Latin phrases, I could never tell,
But Johnson could, which made him write so well.
Greek, Latin poets, I could never read,
Nor their historians, but our English Speed:[176]
I could not steal their wit, nor plots outrake:
All my plays’ plots, my own poor brain did make.[177]
From Plutarch’s story, I ne’er took a plot,
Nor from romances, nor from Don Quixote.

[Footnote 175: The Duchess seems usually to have spelt Ben Jonson’s name Johnson.]

[Footnote 176: Author of _The History of Great Britain_, etc. The second edition was published in 1627. Speed was a tailor and a man of very little education; but his history of England was for a long time the best in existence.]

[Footnote 177: Is this a slap at Shakespeare?]

Only three short quotations shall be given from her plays; and first we have a fair specimen of her heavy, wearisome style in a few sentences from her play, “The Presence”.