Chapter II: Prologue

Fools, which each man meets in his dish each day,
Are yet the great regalios of a play;
In which to poets you but just appear,
To prize that highest, which cost them so dear;
Fops in the town more easily will pass;
One story makes a statutable ass:
But such in plays must be much thicker sown,
Like yolks of eggs, a dozen beat to one.
Observing poets all their walks invade,
As men watch woodcocks gliding through a glade:
And when they have enough for comedy,
They stow their several bodies in a pye:
The poet's but the cook to fashion it,
For, gallants, you yourselves have found the wit.
To bid you welcome, would your bounty wrong;
None welcome those who bring their cheer along.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

_Lord_ DARTMOUTH, _in love with Mrs_ CHRISTIAN.
_Mr_ MOODY, _the Swash-buckler_[A].
_Sir_ MARTIN MAR-ALL, _a fool_.
WARNER, _his man_.
_Sir_ JOHN SWALLOW, _a Kentish knight_.

_Lady_ DUPE, _the old lady_.
_Mrs_ CHRISTIAN, _her young niece_.
_Mrs_ MILLISENT, _the Swash-buckler's daughter_.
ROSE, _her maid_.
_Mrs_ PREPARATION, _woman to the old lady_.

_Other Servants, men and women, a Carrier, Bailiffs._

SCENE--_Covent Garden_.

[Footnote A: _Swash-buckler_ seems to have been a title for those, who retained the old blunt manners of Queen Elizabeth's time, when sword and buckler were the common weapons. "Of old, when Englishmen were fenced with bucklers, as with a rampier, nothing was more common with them, than to fight about taking the right or left hand on the wall, or upon any unpleasing countenance: clashing of swords was then daily music in every street." MORYSON'S _Itinerary_, Part III. Book iv.--The buckler was disused in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign; but those who affected the old-fashioned, blunt, boisterous manners, common when that ancient weapon was used in brawls, were, like old Moody in the play, still termed _Swash-bucklers_.]

SIR MARTIN MAR-ALL.