Let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally consists: That is either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant....
Let any man who understands English, read diligently the Works of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will find, in every page, either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense.... Many of their plots were made up of some ridiculous or 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 Shakspeare; besides many of the rest, as the Winter's Tale, Love's Labour 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 our concernment.
.... I could easily demonstrate that our admired Fletcher neither understood correct plotting, nor what they call the decorum of the stage.... The reader will see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself.... His shepherd falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women. (Defence of the Epilogue, etc.)
[164]: Many of his words and more of his phrases are scarce intelligible; and of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is affected as it is obscure.
[165]: Well-placing of words for the sweetness of pronunciation was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it.
[166]: In the age wherein those poets lived there was less of gallantry than in ours.... Besides the want of learning and education, they wanted the happiness of converse....
If any ask me wherein it is that our conversation is so much refined, I must ascribe it to the Court.
Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other, and though they allow Cob and Tib to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tankard or with their rags.
[167]: Préface de All for Love.
[168]: They are likewise to be gathered from the several virtues, vices, or passions, and many other common-places which a poet must be supposed to have learned from natural philosophy, ethicks, and history: of all which whosoever is ignorant does not deserve the name of poet.