Prologue To "Sophonisba,"
By John Dryden
ACTED AT OXFORD, 1680.
WRITTEN BY NATHAN LEE.
Thespis,[1] the first professor of our art,
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.
To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
"Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis."
But schylus, says Horace in some page,
Was the first mountebank that trod the stage:
Yet Athens never knew your learned sport
Of tossing poets in a tennis-court.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation:
And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,
Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,
And every prayer be longer than a play.
Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,
For disbelieving of a Popish plot:
Your poets shall be used like infidels,
And worst, the author of the Oxford bells:
Nor should we 'scape the sentence, to depart,
Even in our first original, a cart.
No zealous brother there would want a stone
To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan:
Religion, learning, wit, would be suppress'd--
Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast:
Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,
As chief supporters of the triple crown;
And Aristotle's for destruction ripe;
Some say he call'd the soul an organ-pipe,
Which by some little help of derivation,
Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration.