A prologue? Well, of course the ladies know, - I have my doubts. No matter, - here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech....
Grown old in rhyme, 'twere barbarous to discard Your persevering, unexhausted bard; Damnation follows death in other men, But your damn'd poet lives and writes again....
A moment's pause before we play our parts, To speak the thought that reigns within your hearts.-- Now from the Future's hours, and unknown days, Affection turns, and with the Past delays;...
With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake, Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce ache...
There is a poetry that speaks Through common things: the grasshopper, That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks, Says all of summer to my ear: And in the cricket's cry I hear...
A plain-built[1] house, after so long a stay, Will send you half unsatisfied away; When, fallen from your expected pomp, you find A bare convenience only is design'd. You, who each day can theatres behold,...
No song nor dance I bring from yon great city That queens it o'er our taste, the more's the pity: Tho', by-the-by, abroad why will you roam? Good sense and taste are natives here at home:...
When by a generous Public's kind acclaim, That dearest meed is granted, honest fame; When here your favour is the actor's lot, Nor even the man in private life forgot;...
So shipwreck'd passengers escape to land, So look they, when on the bare beach they stand, Dropping and cold, and their first fear scarce o'er, Expecting famine on a desert shore....
In the year Seventeen Hundred and Seventy and Three, When the GEORGES were ruling o'er Britain the free, There was played a new play, on a new-fashioned plan,...
Even as one in city pent, Dazed with the stir and din of town, Drums on the pane in discontent, And sees the dreary rain come down, Yet, through the dimmed and dripping glass,...
In olden time--in great Eliza's age, When rare Ben Jonson ruled the humorous stage, No play without its Prologue might appear To earn applause or ward the critic's sneer;...
Full twenty years and more, our labouring stage Has lost on this incorrigible age: Our poets, the John Ketches of the nation, Have seem'd to lash ye, even to excoriation:...
To say, this comedy pleased long ago, Is not enough to make it pass you now. Yet, gentlemen, your ancestors had wit; When few men censured, and when fewer writ. And Jonson, of those few the best, chose this...
As needy gallants in the scrivener's hands, Court the rich knave that gripes their mortgaged lands, The first fat buck of all the season's sent, And keeper takes no fee in compliment:...
Great cry, and little wool - is now become The plague and proverb of the weaver's loom; No wool to work on, neither weft nor warp; Their pockets empty, and their stomachs sharp....