Chapter XXXVII: Prologue

Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not better’d much;
Yet ours for want hath not so lov’d the stage,
As he dare serve th’ ill customs of the age,
Or purchase your delight at such a rate, 5
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:
To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot-and-half-foot words, 10
Fight over York and Lancaster’s long jars,
And in the tyring-house[1108] bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleas’d to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o’er the seas, 15
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor roll’d bullet heard
To Bay, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come; 20
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the tunes,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes;
Except we make ’em such, by loving still 25
Our popular errors, when we know they’re ill.
I mean such errors as you’ll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which when you heartily do, there’s hope left then,
You, that have so grac’d monsters, may like men. 30