[384] The great and good Howard visited Eyam the year before he last left England, to examine in that village the records of the pestilential calamity which it had endured, and of those virtues which resembled his own.
[385] Eakring rectory.
Garrick Plays.
No. XXXVII.
[From “Ram Alley,” a Comedy, by Lodowick Barry, 1611.]
In the Prologue the Poet protests the innocence of his Play, and gives a promise of better things.
Home bred mirth our Muse doth sing;
The Satyr’s tooth, and waspish sting.
Which most do hurt when least suspected,
By this Play are not affected.
But if conceit, with quick-turn’d scenes,
Observing all those ancient streams
Which from the Horse-foot fount do flow—
As time, place, person—and to show
Things never done, with that true life,
That thoughts and wits shall stand at strife,
Whether the things now shewn be true;
Or whether we ourselves now do
The things we but present: if these,
Free from the loathsome Stage-disease,
So over-worn, so tired and stale;
Not satyrising, but to rail;—
May win your favors, and inherit
But calm acceptance of his merit,—
He vows by paper, pen, and ink,
And by the Learned Sisters’ drink,
To spend his time, his lamps, his oil,
And never cease his brain to toil,
Till from the silent hours of night
He doth produce, for your delight,
Conceits so new, so harmless free,
That Puritans themselves may see
A Play; yet not in public preach,
That Players such lewd doctrine teach,
That their pure joints do quake and tremble,
When they do see a man resemble
The picture of a villain.—This,
As he a friend to Muses is,
To you by me he gives his word,
Is all his Play does now afford.
[From the “Royal King and Loyal Subject,” a Tragi-comedy, by T. Heywood, 1627.]