The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II: Prologue to Sophonisba

Prologue to Sophonisba

ACTED AT OXFORD, 1680.

WRITTEN BY NATHAN LEE.

  Thespis,[55] 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 Æschylus, 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:                          10
  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.                                 20
  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.                         30
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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 55: 'Thespis:' the inventor of tragedy.]

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