For he ne'er thought a handsome garb or dress
So great a crime to make their judgment less;
And with these gallants he these ladies joins,
To judge that language their converse refines.
But if their censures should condemn his play,
Far from disputing, he does only pray
He may Leander's destiny obtain:*

Now spare him, drown him when he comes again.

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PROLOGUE TO "THE RIVAL LADIES."+
1664.

'Tis much desired, you judges of the town
Would pass a vote to put all prologues down;
For who can show me, since they first were writ,
They e'er converted one hard-hearted wit?
Yet the world's mended well; in former days
Good prologues were as scarce as now good plays.
For the reforming poets of our age

In this first charge spend their poetic rage.
Expect no more when once the prologue's done,
The wit is ended ere the play's begun.

You now have habits, dances, scenes, and rhymes,
High language often, ay, and sense sometimes.
As for a clear contrivance, doubt it not;
They blow out candles to give light to the plot.
And for surprise, two bloody-minded men
Fight till they die, then rise and dance again.
Such deep intrigues you're welcome to this day:
But blame yourselves, not him who writ the play.
Though his plot's dull as can be well desired,
Wit stiff as any you have e'er admired,

He's bound to please, not to write well, and knows
There is a mode in plays as well as clothes;
Therefore, kind judges-

2.

A Second Prologue enters.

Hold! would you admit

For judges all you see within the pit?

1. Whom would he then except, or on what score? 2. All who, like him, have writ ill plays before; For they, like thieves condemned, are hangmen made To execute the members of their trade.

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Leander was drowned in swimming across the Hellespont to Hero. "The Rival Ladies," Dryden's second play, a tragi-comedy, was first acted by the King's servants in the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, in the winter of 1663-4. It had better success than "The Wild Gallant," and was published in 1664. Pepys says of this play, which he saw at the King's House, August 4, 1664, “A very innocent, and most pretty witty play: I was much pleased with it." This play when published was dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, and in the dedication Dryden defended his use of rhymed verse in the play. He was quickly replied to by Sir Robert Howard, and thus began the controversy which produced Dryden's "Essay of Dramatic Poesy." and led to a quarrel of short duration between Dryden and his brother-in-law.

All that are writing now he would disown,
But then he must except-even all the town;
All choleric losing gamesters, who in spite
Will damn to-day, because they lost last night;

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All servants, whom their mistress' scorn upbraids,

All maudlin lovers, and all slighted maids,

All who are out of humour or severe,

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All that want wit, or hope to find it here.

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO "THE
INDIAN EMPEROR." *

1665.

PROLOGUE.

ALMIGHTY critics! whom our Indians here
Worship, just as they do the devil, for fear;
In reverence to your power, I come this day,
To give you timely warning of our play.
The scenes are old, the habits are the same
We wore last year, before the Spaniards came +
Now, if you stay, the blood that shall be shed
From this poor play be all upon your head.
We neither promise you one dance or show;
Then plot and language, they are wanting too.
But you, kind wits, will those light faults excuse,
Those are the common frailties of the Muse;
Which who observes, he buys his place too dear;
For 'tis your business to be cozened here.

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These wretched spies of wit must then confess,
They take more pains to please themselves the less.
Grant us such judges, Phoebus, we request,
As still mistake themselves into a jest ;
Such easy judges that our poet may
Himself admire the fortune of his play;

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*The Indian Emperor, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, being the Sequel of the Indian Queen," was the full title with which this tragedy was published in 1667. It was brought out at the Theatre Royal in 1665. "The Indian Queen," of which it was the sequel, was a play by Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law, which had been acted at the Theatre Royal the year before; and Dryden is said to have aided Sir Robert in the composition of "The Indian Queen." But there is no statement of Dryden's precise part in the authorship of "The Indian Queen," or of so much assistance as to justify its being printed (as Scott has printed it) among Dryden's plays: nor is there any evidence to warrant the insertion of the Prologue and Epilogue in a collection of Dryden's poems. The probability is that these were by Sir Robert Howard, and that Dryden only gave slight aid to his brother-in-law. A handbill was distributed when "The Indian Emperor" was brought out, headed, "Connexion of the Indian Emperor to the Indian Queen," and this very natural and innocent mode of explaining the connexion of the story with that of Sir R. Howard's play was ridiculed in the "Rehearsal :" where Mr. Bayes is made to say, "I have printed above a hundred sheets of paper to insinuate the plot into the boxes." "The Indian Emperor" had great

success.

In The Indian Queen," acted the year before, the time was before the arrival of the Spaniards

in Mexico.

And arrogantly, as his fellows do,

Think he writes well, because he pleases you.
This he conceives not hard to bring about,
If all of you would join to help him out:
Would each man take but what he understands,

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And leave the rest upon the poet's hands.

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by a Mercury.

To all and singular in this full meeting,
Ladies and gallants, Phoebus sends ye greeting.
To all his sons, by whate'er title known,
Whether of court, of coffee-house, or town;
From his most mighty sons, whose confidence
Is placed in lofty sound and humble sense,
Even to his little infants of the time,

Who write new songs and trust in tune and rhyme;
Be't known, that Phoebus, being daily grieved

To see good plays condemned and bad received,
Ordains your judgment upon every cause
Henceforth be limited by wholesome laws.
He first thinks fit no sonnetteer advance
His censure farther than the song or dance.
Your wit burlesque may one step higher climb,
And in his sphere may judge all dogrel rhyme;
All proves, and moves, and loves, and honours too;

All that appears high sense, and scarce is low.
As for the coffee-wits, he says not much;

Their proper business is to damn the Dutch.
For the great Dons of wit

Phoebus gives them full privilege alone

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To damn all others, and cry up their own.

Last, for the ladies, 'tis Apollo's will,

They should have power to save, but not to kill;
For Love and he long since have thought it fit,
Wit live by beauty, beauty reign by wit.

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PROLOGUE TO "SECRET LOVE, OR THE
MAIDEN QUEEN." *

1667.

I

IIE who writ this, not without pains and thought,
From French and English theatres has brought
The exactest rules by which a play is wrought:

Dryden's tragi-comedy of "Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen," was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on March 2, 1667. Pepys was present at the first acting of the play, and records his admiration of it, and of the acting, especially that of Nell Gwyn in Florimel. "After dinner, with my wife to the King's House to see The Maiden Queen,' a new play by Dryden, mightily

recommended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit, and the truth is, the conical part done by Nell, which is Florimel, that I never can hope to see the like done again, by man or woman. The King and the Duke of York were at the play. But so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she comes in like a young gallant; and hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her." The play was a great favounte with Charles II., who, Dryden states in his preface to the published play, "graced it with the title of his play." The play was published in 1668. The Epilogue recited and published with the play was by a friend, a person of honour." The following short Epilogue for the play is in "Covent Garden Drollery," with several known pieces by Dryden: it rather tallies with Dryden's Prologue, and it may be by him :

The Prologue durst not tell before 'twas seen
The plot we had to swinge the Maiden Queen.
For had we then discovered our intent,
The fop who writ it had not given consent,
Or the new peaching trick at least had shown
And brought in others' faults to hide his own.
That wit he has been by his betters taught,
When he's accused to show another's fault.
When one wit's hunted hard by joint consent,
Another slips betwixt and does prevent
His death for many hares still foil the scent.
Thus our poor poet would have scaped to-day,
But from the herd I singled out his play.

Then heigh along with me,

Both great and small, you poets of the town,

And Nell will love you, for to hiss him down.

Corneille, a word of three syllables in French, and so pronounced by Dryden. See note, P. 323. Mr. R. Bell has inserted the word old before Corneille, and has done the same again in the Epilogue to "Edipus," line 6.

The Prologue goes out, and stays while a tune is played; after which he returns again.

SECOND PROLOGUE.

I had forgot one half, I do protest,

And now am sent again to speak the rest.
He bows to every great and noble wit;
But to the little Hectors of the pit
Our poet's sturdy, and will not submit.
He'll be beforehand with 'em, and not stay
To see each peevish critic stab his play;
Each puny censor, who, his skill to boast,
Is cheaply witty on the poet's cost.

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They are excepted all, as men of blood:

No critic's verdict should of right stand good,

Which has excluded butchers from a jury.

And the same law should shield him from their fury,

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You'd all be wits

But writing's tedious, and that way may fail;
The most compendious method is to rail;
Which you so like, you think yourselves ill used,
When in smart prologues you are not abused.
A civil prologue is approved by no man;
You hate it as you do a civil woman.
Your fancy's palled, and liberally you pay
To have it quickened ere you see a play.
Just as old sinners, worn from their delight,
Give money to be whipped to appetite.
But what a pox keep I so much ado
To save our poet? He is one of you;

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A brother judgment,* and, as I hear say,

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A cursed critic as e'er damned a play.

* Judgment is again used in the sense of judge in the Epilogue to "An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer," line 3.

↑ Sets improperly changed to sits in modern editions.