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A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 15 cover

A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 15

Chapter 35: THE PROLOGUE AT COURT. HE ADDRESSES HIMSELF TO THE PIT.
By Robert Dodsley
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About This Book

An edited anthology gathers seventeenth-century and earlier English plays, presented chronologically with introductions, dramatis personae, stage directions, and explanatory notes by various commentators with added annotations. The selection includes comedies of intrigue and Restoration-era dramas that explore mistaken identities, romantic entanglements, honour, and social satire; several pieces derive from or adapt Spanish originals and feature complex plots, servants' subplots, and courtroom or domestic scenes. Scholarly apparatus includes a prefatory history of the theatre, glossarial and errata indices, and editorial commentary that contextualizes authorship, editions, and performance history for readers seeking both dramatic texts and critical notes.

THE PROLOGUE AT COURT.
HE ADDRESSES HIMSELF TO THE PIT.

This refers to the author's purpose of retirement, at that time when his Majesty recommended this plot to him.
As to a dying lamp one drop of oil
 Gives a new blaze, and makes it live awhile;
 So th' author, seeing his decaying light,
 And therefore thinking to retire from sight,
 Was hindered by a ray from the upper sphere,
 Just at that time he thought to disappear.
 He chanced to hear his Majesty once say,
 He lik'd this plot; he stay'd, and writ the play:
 So should obsequious subjects catch the minds
 Of princes, as your seamen do the winds.
 If this attempt then shows more zeal than light,
 'T may teach you to obey, though not to write.
He looking up, and seeing the King, starts.
He kneels. He rises.
Ah! he is there himself. Pardon my sight,
 My eyes were dazzled with excess of light;
 Even so the sun, who all things else displays,
 Is hid from us i' the glory of his rays.
 Will you vouchsafe your presence? You, that were given
 To be our Atlas, and support our heaven?
 Will you, dread sir, your precious moments lose
 To grace the first endeavours of our muse?
 This with your character most aptly suits,
 Even heaven itself is pleas'd with the first-fruits.