Chapter XXX: Prologue: TO

SOPHONISBA; SPOKEN AT OXFORD,

1680.

_Sophonisba was play of N. Lee, first acted about_ 1676. _It is in
the taste of the French stage, and of the romances of Calprenede
and Scuderi. Hannibal and Massinissa are introduced in the
character of whining love-sick adorers of relentless beauty. This
prevailing taste is admirably ridiculed by Boileau, in a dialogue
where a scene is laid in the infernal regions. In the prologue
spoken at Oxford, which was always famous for Tory principles, our
author ventures to ridicule the Popish Plot, and to predict the
consequences of the predominance of fanatical principles to the
studies cultivated in the University._

Thespis, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes, sung ballads from a cart.
To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
_Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis._
But Æschylus, says Horace in some page,
Was the first mountebank that trod the stage:
Yet Athens never knew your learned sport,
Of tossing poets in a tennis-court[354].
But 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation;
And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,
Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,
And every prayer be longer than a play.
Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,
For disbelieving of a Popish-plot;
Your poets shall be used like infidels,
And worst, the author of the Oxford bells;[355]
Nor should we 'scape the sentence, to depart,
Even in our first original, a cart;
No zealous brother there would want a stone,
To maul us cardinals, and pelt pope Joan.
Religion, learning, wit, would be supprest,
Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast;
Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin,[356] must go down,
As chief supporters of the triple crown;
And Aristotle's for destruction ripe;
Some say, he called the soul an organ-pipe,
Which, by some little help of derivation,
Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 354: Apparently, a tennis-court was the place where the temporary stage was erected at Oxford.]

[Footnote 355: Probably some pasquinade against the Whigs, then current in the university.]

[Footnote 356: Noted school divines, whose works (the greater was the pity) were then in high esteem in the university.]

A PROLOGUE.

_This Prologue was obviously spoken in_ 1680-1, _from its frequent
reference to the politics of that period: but upon what particular
occasion I have not discovered._

If yet there be a few that take delight }
In that which reasonable men should write, }
To them alone we dedicate this night. }
The rest may satisfy their curious itch
With city-gazettes, or some factious speech,[357]
Or whate'er libel, for the public good,
Stirs up the shrove-tide crew to fire and blood.
Remove your benches, you apostate pit,
And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;
Go back to your dear dancing on the rope,
Or see what's worse, the devil and the pope.[358]
The plays, that take on our corrupted stage,
Methinks, resemble the distracted age;
Noise, madness, all unreasonable things,
That strike at sense, as rebels do at kings.
The style of forty-one our poets write,
And you are grown to judge like forty-eight.[359]
Such censures our mistaking audience make,
That 'tis almost grown scandalous to take.
They talk of fevers that infect the brains;
But nonsense is the new disease that reigns.
Weak stomachs, with a long disease opprest,
Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest;
Therefore thin nourishment of farce ye choose,
Decoctions of a barley-water muse.
A meal of tragedy would make ye sick,
Unless it were a very tender chick.
Some scenes in sippets would be worth our time;
Those would go down; some love that's poached in rhime:
If these should fail----
We must lie down, and, after all our cost,
Keep holiday, like watermen in frost;
While you turn players on the world's great stage,
And act yourselves the farce of your own age.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 357: The City Gazettes were such publications as the Petition of the City, Mayor, and Aldermen, for the sitting of parliament on the 13th January, 1680, which is printed with the city arms prefixed, by a solemn order of the common council, and an appointment by the Lord Mayor, that Samuel Roycroft, printer to the city, do print the same, pursuant to order, and that no other person presume to do so. The "factious speech" was probably that of Shaftesbury, which was burned by the hands of the common hangman.]

[Footnote 358: The Pope-burning, so often mentioned.]

[Footnote 359: The meaning is, that the poets rebel against sense and criticism, like the parliament, in 1641, against the king; and that the audience judge as ill as those, who, in 1648, condemned Charles to the block. The parallel between the political disputes in 1680, and 1681, and those which preceded the great civil war, was fashionable among the Tories. A Whig author, who undertakes "to answer the clamours of the malicious, and to inform the ignorant on this subject," complains, "It hath been all the clamour of late, _forty-one_, _forty-one_ is now coming to be acted over again; we are running in the very same steps, in the same path and road, to undo the nation, and to ruin kingly government, as our predecessors did in _forty_, _and forty-one_. We run the same courses, we take the same measures; _latet anguis in herba_; beware of the Presbyterian serpent, who lurks in the affairs of _eighty_, being the very same complexion, form, and shape, as that of forty and forty one."--_The Disloyal Forty and Forty-one, and the Loyal Eighty, presented to public view._ Folio 1680.]