PROLOGUE.
(In character.)
Too long the triumphs of our early times,
With civil discord, and with regal crimes,
Have stain'd these boards; while Shakespeare's pen has shown
Thoughts, manners, men, to modern days unknown.
Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage; [Applause.
And classic buskins soil'd a British stage.
To-night our bard, who scorns pedantic rules,
His plot has borrow'd from the German schools;
—The German schools—where no dull maxims bind
The bold expansion of the electric mind.
Fix'd to no period, circled by no space,
He leaps the flaming bounds of time and place:
Round the dark confines of the forest raves,
With gentle robbers[204] stocks his gloomy caves;
Tells how prime ministers[205] are shocking things,
And reigning dukes as bad as tyrant kings;
How to two swains[206] one nymph her vows may give,
And how two damsels with one lover live!
Delicious scenes!—such scenes our bard displays,
Which, crown'd with German, sue for British, praise.
Slow are the steeds, that through Germania's roads
With hempen rein the slumbering post-boy goads;
Slow is the slumbering post-boy, who proceeds
Through deep sands floundering, on those tardy steeds;
More slow, more tedious, from his husky throat
Twangs through the twisted horn the struggling note.
These truths confess'd—Oh! yet, ye travell'd few,
Germania's plays with eyes unjaundiced view!
View and approve!—though in each passage fine
The faint translation[207] mock the genuine line;
Though the nice ear the erring sight belie,
For U twice dotted is pronounced like I; [Applause.
Yet oft the scene shall Nature's fire impart,
Warm from the breast, and glowing to the heart!
Ye travell'd few, attend! On you our bard
Builds his fond hope! Do you his genius guard! [Applause.
Nor let succeeding generations say—
A British audience damn'd a German play. [Loud and continued applauses.
[Flash of lightning.—The ghost of Prologue's Grandmother, by the father's side, appears to soft music, in a white tiffany riding-hood. Prologue kneels to receive her blessing, which she gives in a solemn and affecting manner, the audience clapping and crying all the while.—Flash of lightning.—Prologue and his Grandmother sink through the trap-door.