The following is from Dryden’s Defence of the Epilogue:—Let any man who understands English read diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and
I dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; and yet these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny.
——Neque ego illis detrahere ausim
Hærentem capiti multa cum laude coronam.
But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots; many of which, especially those which they writ first (for even that age refined itself in some measure), were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” nor the historical plays of Shakespeare; besides many of the rest, as the “Winter’s Tale,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” “Measure for Measure,” which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.
ANONYMOUS, 1672
In country beauties, as we often see
Something that takes in their simplicity;
Yet while they charm, they know not they are fair,