Faint and unnerved, he runs into a sweat,
And always fails you at the second heat.
PROLOGUE
TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1681.
This Prologue appears to have been spoken at Oxford shortly after the dissolution of the famous Parliament held there, March, 1680-1. From the following couplet, it would seem that the players had made an unsuccessful attempt to draw houses during the short sitting of that Parliament:
We looked what representatives would bring,
But they served us just as they did the king.
At that time a greater stage was opened for the public amusement, and the mimic theatre could excite little interest.
Dryden seems, though perhaps unconsciously, to have borrowed the two first lines of this Prologue from Drayton: