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XLIV.
PROLOGUE TO "THE MISTAKES."
BY JOSEPH HARRIS, COMEDIAN, 1690. (WRITTEN BY SOME OTHER.)
Enter Mr Bright.
Gentlemen, we must beg your pardon; here's no Prologue to be had to-day; our new play is like to come on, without a frontispiece; as bald as one of you young beaux, without your periwig. I left our young poet, snivelling and sobbing behind the scenes, and cursing somebody that has deceived him.
Enter Mr Bowen.
Hold your prating to the audience: here is honest Mr Williams, just come in, half mellow, from the Rose Tavern. He swears he is inspired with claret, and will come on, and that extempore too, either with a prologue of his own or something like one. Oh, here he comes to his trial, at all adventures: for my part I wish him a good deliverance.
[Exeunt Mr Bright and Mr Bowen.
Enter Mr Williams.