Must learn their art from those who dress ’em;
But give me actors, give me plays,
On which I could with rapture gaze,
Tho’ coats and scenes were made of baise:
For if the scene were highly wrought;
If actors acted as they ought;
You would not then be pleased to see
This heavy mass of frippery.
Hear Horace, sir, who wrote of plays
In Ancient Rome’s Augustan days:—