FOOTNOTES:
[59] In the alteration of Shakespeare's Tempest, by Dryden and Davenant.
[60] Louise de Kerouaille, Charles II.'s well-known mistress, who was sent over by Louis XIV., and who supplanted all Charles's other mistresses, except Nell Gwyn. Wealth and honours were heaped upon her, and her apartments at Whitehall were far more splendid, Evelyn tells us, than the queen's. She had, of course, many enemies, one of whom, in the same year in which Otway wrote this dedication, placed the following lines beneath her portrait:—
"Lowly born and meanly bred,
Yet of this nation is the head;
For half Whitehall make her their court,
Though the other half make her their sport.
Monmouth's tower, Jeffery's advance,
Foe to England, spy to France,
False and foolish, proud and bold,
Ugly, as you see, and old;
In a word, her mighty Grace
Is whore in all things but her face."
She was, however, at this time not more than thirty-seven, and survived the king for fifty years.
[61] Charles Lennox, created Duke of Richmond in 1675, and an ancestor of the present Duke.
PROLOGUE.
In these distracted times, when each man dreads
The bloody stratagems of busy heads;
When we have feared, three years, we know not what,
Till witnesses[62] begin to die o' the rot,
What made our poet meddle with a plot?
Was't that he fancied, for the very sake
And name of plot, his trifling play might take?
For there's not in't one inch-board evidence,
But 'tis, he says, to reason plain, and sense,
And that he thinks a plausible defence.
Were truth by sense and reason to be tried,
Sure all our swearers might be laid aside:
No, of such tools our author has no need,
To make his plot, or make his play succeed;
He of black bills has no prodigious tales,
Or Spanish pilgrims cast ashore in Wales;
Here's not one murdered magistrate at least,
Kept rank, like venison for a city feast;
Grown four days stiff, the better to prepare
And fit his pliant limbs to ride in chair:
Yet here's an army raised, though under ground,
But no man seen, nor one commission found;
Here is a traitor too that's very old,
Turbulent, subtle, mischievous, and bold;
Bloody, revengeful, and, to crown his part,
Loves fumbling with a wench with all his heart;
Till after having many changes past,
In spite of age (thanks Heaven) is hanged at last.
Next is a senator that keeps a whore,
In Venice none a higher office bore;
To lewdness every night the lecher ran:
Show me, all London, such another man,
Match him at Mother Creswold's[63] if you can.
O Poland, Poland! had it been thy lot,
T'have heard in time of this Venetian plot,
Thou surely chosen hadst one king from thence,
And honoured them, as thou hast England since.