Venus.
The Nine Muses.
[THE COMICAL HISTORY OF ALPHONSUS, KING OF ARRAGON]
ACT THE FIRST
PROLOGUE
After you have sounded thrice, let Venus be let down from the top of the stage.
Venus. Poets are scarce, when goddesses themselves
Are forc'd to leave their high and stately seats,
Plac'd on the top of high Olympus' Mount,
To seek them out, to pen their champions' praise.
The time hath been when Homer's sugar'd Muse
Did make each echo to repeat his verse,
That every coward that durst crack a spear,
And tilt and tourney for his lady's sake,
Was painted out in colours of such price
As might become the proudest potentate.
But now-a-days so irksome idless' slights,
And cursèd charms have witch'd each student's mind,
That death it is to any of them all,
If that their hands to penning you do call.
O Virgil, Virgil, wert thou now alive,
Whose painful pen, in stout Augustus' days,
Did dain[26] to let the base and silly fly
To scape away without thy praise of her,
I do not doubt but long or ere this time,
Alphonsus' fame unto the heavens should climb;
Alphonsus' fame, that man of Jove his seed,
Sprung from the loins of the immortal gods,
Whose sire, although he habit on the earth,
May claim a portion in the fiery pole,
As well as any one whate'er he be.
But, setting by Alphonsus' power divine,
What man alive, or now amongst the ghosts,
Could countervail his courage and his strength?
But thou art dead, yea, Virgil, thou art gone,
And all his acts drown'd in oblivion.
And all his acts drown'd in oblivion?[27]
No, Venus, no, though poets prove unkind,
And loth to stand in penning of his deeds,
Yet rather than they shall be clean forgot,
I, which was wont to follow Cupid's games
Will put in ure[28] Minerva's sacred art;
And this my hand, which usèd for to pen
The praise of love and Cupid's peerless power,
Will now begin to treat of bloody Mars,
Of doughty deeds and valiant victories.
Enter Melpomene, Clio, Erato, with their Sisters, playing all upon sundry instruments, Calliope only excepted, who coming last, hangeth down the head, and plays not of her instrument.