Ch. 756: PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE****

Flourish. Enter Prologue.

PROLOGUE.

New plays and maidenheads are near akin:

Much followed both, for both much money gi’en,

If they stand sound and well. And a good play,

Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day

And shake to lose his honour, is like her

That after holy tie and first night’s stir

Yet still is Modesty, and still retains

More of the maid, to sight, than husband’s pains.

We pray our play may be so, for I am sure

It has a noble breeder and a pure,

A learned, and a poet never went

More famous yet ’twixt Po and silver Trent.

Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives;

There, constant to eternity, it lives.

If we let fall the nobleness of this,

And the first sound this child hear be a hiss,

How will it shake the bones of that good man

And make him cry from underground, “O, fan

From me the witless chaff of such a writer

That blasts my bays and my famed works makes lighter

Than Robin Hood!” This is the fear we bring;

For, to say truth, it were an endless thing

And too ambitious, to aspire to him,

Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim

In this deep water. Do but you hold out

Your helping hands, and we shall tack about

And something do to save us. You shall hear

Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear

Worth two hours’ travel. To his bones sweet sleep;

Content to you. If this play do not keep

A little dull time from us, we perceive

Our losses fall so thick, we must needs leave.

[_Flourish. Exit. _]