Our play a merry comedy had proved,
Had she confessed so much to him she loved.
True Presbyterian wives the means would try;
But damned confessing is flat Popery.
PROLOGUE
TO
ARVIRAGUS AND PHILICIA.
BY LODOWICK CARLELL, ESQ.
SPOKEN BY MR HART.
Lodowick Carlell, according to Langbaine, was an ancient courtier, being gentleman of the bows to King Charles I., groom of the king and queen's privy chamber, and servant to the queen-mother many years. His plays, the same author adds, were well esteemed of, and acted chiefly at the private house in Blackfriars. They were seven in number. "Arviragus and Philicia" consisted of two parts, and was first printed in 8vo, 1639. The prologue, which was spoken upon the revival of the piece, turns upon the caprice of the town, in preferring, to the plays of their own poets, the performances of a troop of French comedians, who, it seems, were then acting both tragedies and comedies in their own language.
With sickly actors, and an old house too,