In fine, the whole by you so much was blamed,
To act their parts, the players were ashamed[2].
Ah, how severe your malice was that day!
To damn, at once, the poet and his play[3]:
But why was your rage just at that time shown,
When what the author writ was all his own?
Till then, he borrowed from romance, and did translate[4];
And those plays found a more indulgent fate.
Ravenscroft, however, seems to have given the first offence; for, in the prologue to "The Citizen turned Gentleman," licensed 9th August 1672, we find the following lines, obviously levelled at "The Conquest of Granada," and other heroic dramas of our author:
Then shall the knight, that had a knock in's cradle,