With sickly actors, and an old house too, We're matched with glorious theatres, and new; And with our alehouse scenes, and clothes bare worn, Can neither raise old plays, nor new adorn. If all these ills could not undo us quite, A brisk French troop is grown your dear delight; Who with broad bloody bills call you each day, To laugh and break your buttons at their play; Or see some serious piece, which, we presume, Is fallen from some incomparable _plume_; "And therefore, Messieurs, if you'll do us grace, Send lacquies early to preserve your place." We dare not on your privilege intrench, Or ask you, why you like them?--they are French. Therefore, some go with courtesy exceeding, Neither to hear nor see, but show their breeding; Each lady striving to outlaugh the rest, To make it seem they understood the jest. Their countrymen come in, and nothing pay, To teach us English were to clap the play: Civil, egad! our hospitable land Bears all the charge for them to understand: Mean time we languish, and neglected lie, Like wives, while you keep better company; And wish for your own sakes, without a satire, You'd less good breeding, or had more good nature.
_"The Prophetess" of Beaumont and Fletcher, even in its original state, required a good deal of machinery; for it contains stage directions for thunder-bolts brandished from on high, and for a chariot drawn through mid air by flying dragons; but it was now altered into an opera, with the addition of songs and scenical decorations, by Betterton, in 1690. Our author wrote the following prologue, to introduce it upon the stage in its altered state. The music was by Henry Purcell, and is said to have merited applause. Rich, whose attachment to scenery and decoration is ridiculed by Pope, revived this piece, and piqued himself particularly upon a set of dancing chairs, which he devised for the nonce._
_The prologue gave offence to the court, and was prohibited by the Earl of Dorset, Lord Chamberlain, after the first day's representation. It contains, Cibber remarks, some familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution itself; and as the poetry is good, the offence was less pardonable. King William was at this time prosecuting his campaigns in Ireland; and the author not only ridicules the warfare in which he was engaged, and the English volunteers who attended him, but even the government of Queen Mary in his absence._