Prologue
The bloody stratagems of busy heads;
When we have feared three years we know not what,
Till witnesses began to die o’ th’ rot,
What made our poet meddle with a plot?
Was’t that he fancied, for the very sake
And name of plot, his trifling play might take?
For there’s not in’t one inch-board evidence,
But ’tis, he says, to reason plain and sense,
And that he thinks a plausible defence.
Were Truth by Sense and Reason to be tried,
Sure all our swearers might be laid aside:
No, of such tools our author has no need,
To make his plot, or make his play succeed;
He, of black Bills, has no prodigious tales,
Or Spanish pilgrims cast ashore in Wales;
Here’s not one murther’d magistrate at least,
Kept rank like ven’son for a city feast,
Grown four days stiff, the better to prepare
And fit his pliant limbs to ride in chair:
Yet here’s an army raised, though under ground,
But no man seen, nor one commission found;
Here is a traitor too, that’s very old,
Turbulent, subtle, mischievous, and bold,
Bloody, revengeful, and to crown his part,
Loves fumbling with a wench, with all his heart;
Till after having many changes passed,
In spite of age (thanks heaven) is hanged at last;
Next is a senator that keeps a whore,
In Venice none a higher office bore;
To lewdness every night the letcher ran,
Show me, all London, such another man,
Match him at Mother Creswold’s if you can.
O Poland, Poland! had it been thy lot,
T’ have heard in time of this Venetian plot,
Thou surely chosen hadst one king from thence,
And honoured them as thou hast England since.
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