Never content with what you had before, your care ; Is to provide the horrid pomp of war. brows; Then think, on that bare bench my fervant fat ; PROLOGUE то тнЕ MISTAKE S. Enter Mr. BRIGHT. Entlemen, we must beg your pardon; here's GE no Prologue to be had to-day; our new play is like to come on, without a frontispiece; as bald as one of you young beaux, without your periwig. I left our young poet, fnivelling and fobbing behind the fcenes, and curfing fomebody that has deceived him. Enter Mr. BOWEN. HOLD your prating to the audience: here's honeft Mr. Williams, juft come in, half mellow, from the Rofe-Tavern. He fwears he is inspired with claret, and will come on, and that extempore too, either with a prologue of his own or fomething like one: O here he comes to his tryal, at all adventures; for my part I wish him a good deliverance. [Exeunt Mr. Bright and Mr. Bowen. Enter Mr. WILLIAM S. SAVE ye firs, fave ye! I am in a hopeful way. I should speak fomething, in rhyme, now, for the play : can tell ye, But the duce take me, if I know what to say. I'll stick to my friend the author, that I To the last drop of claret, in my belly. So far I'm fure 'tis rhyme-that needs no granting: my verfes feet stumble---you fee my are wanting. And, if Our young poet has brought a piece of work, In which, tho much of art there does not lurk, may hold out three days---and that's as long as Cork. It But, for this play---(which till I have done, we show not) What may be its fortune---by the Lord---I know not. This I dare fwear, no malice here is writ: "Tis innocent of all things even of wit. He's no high-flyer-he makes no sky-rockets, You are blown up; if not, then he's blown up himself. By this time, I'm fomething recover'd of my flufter'd madness: And now, a word or two in fober fadness. down Ours is a common play; and you pay To tell the truth, when our old wits are tir'd, Let your kind prefence grace our homely cheer; EPILOGUE to HENRY II. [By Mr. MOUNTFORT, 1693.] Spoken by Mrs. BRACEGIRDLE. HUS you the fad catastrophe have seen, Toccafond by a miftrefs and a queen. Queen Eleanor the proud was French, they say; With fuch a miftrefs, or with fuch a wife? life If one must be your choice, which d'ye approve, The curtain lecture, or the curtain love? Would ye be godly with perpetual ftrife, Still drudging on with homely Joan your wife; |