Classic Poem

TO THE JEW OF VENICE .

Each in his turn, the poet and the priest,
Have view'd the stage, but like false prophets guest,
The man of zeal, in his religious rage,
Would silence poets, and reduce the stage.
The poet, rashly to get clear, retorts
On kings the scandal, and bespatters courts.
Both err; for, without mincing, to be plain,
The guilt's your own of ev'ry odious scene.
The present time still gives the stage its mode;
The vices that you practise we explode:
We hold the glass, and but reflect your shame,
Like Spartans, by exposing to reclaim.
The scribbler, pinch'd with hunger, writes to dine,
And to your genius must conform his line;
Not lewd by choice, but merely to submit.
Would you encourage sense, sense would be writ.
Good plays we try, which, after the first day,
Unseen we act, and to bare benches play.
Plain sense, which pleas'd your sires an age ago,
Is lost without the garniture of show.
At vast expense we labour to our ruin,
And court your favour with our own undoing.
A war of profit mitigates the evil,
But to be tax'd and beaten — is the devil.
How was the scene forlorn, and how despis'd,
When Timon without music moraliz'd!
Shakespeare's sublime in vain entic'd the throng
Without the aid of Purcell's Syren song.
In the same antique loom these scenes were wrought,
Embellish'd with good morals and just thought;
True Nature in her noblest light you see,
Ere yet debauch'd by modern gallantry
To trifling jests and fulsome ribaldry:
What rust remains upon the shining mass,
Antiquity must privilege to pass.
'Tis Shakespeare's play, and if these scenes miscarry,
Let Gormon take the stage — or Lady Mary.