Classic Poem

AT THE COCK-PIT

We know not how our play may pass this stage,
 But by the best of poets in that age
  The Malta-Jew had being and was made;
 And he then by the best of †actors play'd:
 In Hero and Leander one did gain
 A lasting memory; in Tamburlaine ,
 This Jew, with others many, th' other wan
 The attribute of peerless, being a man
 Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong)
 Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue,
 So could he speak, so vary; nor is't hate
 To merit in him who doth personate Perkins.
 Our Jew this day; nor is it his ambition
 To exceed or equal, being of condition
 More modest: this is all that he intends,
 (And that too at the urgence of some friends,)
 To prove his best, and, if none here gainsay it,
 The part he hath studied, and intends to play it.