Invade and grubble one another's punk:
They caterwaul, and make a dismal rout,
Call sons of whores, and strike, but ne'er lug out:
Thus, while for paltry punk they roar and stickle,
They make it bawdier than a conventicle.
PROLOGUE
TO
THE KING AND QUEEN,
UPON THE
UNION OF THE TWO COMPANIES, IN 1686.
The two rival Companies, so long known by the names of the King's and the Duke's players, after exhausting every effort, both of poetry and machinery, to obtain a superiority over each other, were, at length, by the expence of these exertions, and the inconstancy of the public, reduced to the necessity of uniting their forces, in order to maintain their ground. "Taste and fashion," says Colley Cibber, "with us, have always had wings, and fly from one public spectacle to another so wantonly, that I have been informed, by those who remember it, that a famous puppet-show, in Salisbury-change, then standing where Cecil-street now is, so far distressed these two celebrated companies, that they were reduced to petition the king for relief against it. Nor ought we, perhaps, to think this strange, when, if I mistake not, Terence himself reproaches the Roman auditors of his time with the like fondness for the funambuli, the rope-dancers. Not to dwell too long, therefore, upon that part of my history, which I have only collected from oral tradition, I shall content myself with telling you, that Mohun and Hart now growing old, (for above thirty years before this time, they had severally borne the king's commission of major and captain in the civil wars,) and the younger actors, as Goodman, Clark, and others, being impatient to get into their parts, and growing intractable, the audiences too of both houses then falling off, the patentees of each, by the king's advice, (which, perhaps, amounted to a command,) united their interests, and both companies into one, exclusive of all others, in the year 1684. This union was, however, so much in favour of the Duke's company, that Hart left the stage upon it, and Mohun survived not long after."[388] Apology, p. 58.