Prologue To "The Loyal General;" By Mr Tate, 1680.

If yet there be a few that take delight         In that which reasonable men should write;         To them alone we dedicate this night.         The rest may satisfy their curious itch         With city-gazettes, or some factious speech,         Or whate'er libel, for the public good,         Stirs up the shrove-tide crew to fire and blood.         Remove your benches, you apostate pit,         And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;         Go back to your dear dancing on the rope,         Or see, what's worse, the Devil and the Pope.         The plays that take on our corrupted stage,         Methinks, resemble the distracted age;         Noise, madness, all unreasonable things,         That strike at sense, as rebels do at kings.         The style of forty-one our poets write,         And you are grown to judge like forty-eight,[1]         Such censures our mistaking audience make,         That 'tis almost grown scandalous to take.         They talk of fevers that infect the brains;         But nonsense is the new disease that reigns.         Weak stomachs, with a long disease oppress'd,         Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest.         Therefore thin nourishment of farce ye choose,         Decoctions of a barley-water Muse:         A meal of tragedy would make ye sick,         Unless it were a very tender chick.         Some scenes in sippets would be worth our time;         Those would go down; some love that's poach'd in rhyme:         If these should fail--         We must lie down, and, after all our cost,         Keep holiday, like watermen in frost;         While you turn players on the world's great stage,         And act yourselves the farce of your own age.