Chapter I: Prologue: Spoken by Mr. William Mills

_I Wish, with all my Heart, the Stage and Town Would both agree to cry all Prologues down; That we, no more oblig'd to say or sing, Might drop this useless necessary Thing: No more with aukward Strut, before the Curtain, Chaunt out some Rhimes--there's neither good nor hurt in._

_What is this Stuff the Poets make us deal in, But some old worn-out Jokes of their Retailing: From Sages of our own, or former Times, Transvers'd from Prose, perhaps transpros'd from Rhimes._

_How long the Tragick Muse her Station kept, } How Guilt was humbl'd, and how Tyrants wept, } Forgetting still how often Hearers slept._ }

_Perhaps, for Change, you, now and then, by Fits, Are told that Criticks are the Bane of Wits; How they turn Vampyres, being dead and damn'd, And with the Blood of living Bards are cramm'd: That Poets thus tormented die, and then The Devil gets in them, and they suck agen._

_Thus modern Bards, like Bays, their Prologues frame, } For this, and that, and every Play the same, } Which you, most justly, neither praise nor blame._ }

_As something must be spoke, no matter what; No Friends are now by Prologues lost or got; By such Harangues we raise nor Spleen, nor Pity-- Thus ends this idle, but important Ditty._

Dramatis Personae.

MEN.

_Old Laroon._ Mr. _Shepard_. _Young Laroon._ Mr. _Mills_, Junior. _Father Martin._ Mr. _Cibber_, Junior. _Old Jourdain._ Mr. _Roberts_.

WOMEN.

_Isabel._ Miss _Raftor_. _Beatrice._ Miss _Williams_.

SCENE _THOULON_.

THE _Old DEBAUCHEES._