Classic Poem

WHO JUDGE OF MODERN PLAYS PRECISELY BY THE RULES OF THE ANCIENTS .

Whoever will regard poetic fury,
When it is once found Idiot by a jury,
And every pert and arbitrary fool
Can all poetic licence over-rule;
Assume a barbarous tyranny to handle
The Muses, worse than Ostrogoth and Vandal;
Make 'em submit to verdict and report,
And stand or fall to the' orders of a court?
Much less be sentenc'd by the arbitrary
Proceedings of a witless plagiary,
That forges old records and ordinances
Against the right and property of fancies;
More false and nice than weighing of the weather
To the' hundredth atom of the lightest feather,
Or measuring of air upon Parnassus,
With cylinders of Torricellian glasses;
Reduce all Tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its antique theatre, a cart;
And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads
Of reverend choruses and episodes;
Reform and regulate a puppet-play,
According to the true and ancient way,
That not an actor shall presume to squeak,
Unless he have a licence for't in Greek;
Nor Whittington henceforward sell his cat in
Plain vulgar English, without mewing Latin:
No pudding shall be suffer'd to be witty,
Unless it be in order to raise pity;
Nor devil in the puppet-play be allow'd
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chance t' have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;
That other men may tremble, and take warning,
How such a fatal progeny they're born in;
For none but such for Tragedy are fitted,
That have been ruin'd only to be pitied;
And only those held proper to deter,
Who've had the' ill luck against their wills to err:
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,
Between morality and venial vices,
Are qualified to be destroy'd by Fate,
For other mortals to take warning at.
As if the antique laws of Tragedy
Did with our own municipal agree,
And serv'd, like cobwebs, but to' ensnare the weak,
And give diversion to the great to break;
To make a less delinquent to be brought
To answer for a greater person's fault,
And suffer all the worst, the worst approver
Can, to excuse and save himself, discover.
No longer shall Dramatics be confin'd
To draw true images of all mankind;
To punish in effigy criminals,
Reprieve the innocent, and hang the false;
But a club-law to execute and kill,
For nothing, whomsoe'er they please, at will,
To terrify spectators from committing
The crimes they did, and suffer'd for unwitting.
These are the reformations of the Stage,
Like other reformations of the age,
On purpose to destroy all wit and sense,
As the' other did all law and conscience;
No better than the laws of British plays,
Confirm'd in the' ancient good King Howel's days,
Who made a general council regulate
Men's catching women by the — you know what;
And set down in the rubric at what time
It should be counted legal, when a crime,
Declare when 'twas, and when 'twas not a sin,
And on what days it went out or came in.
An English poet should be try'd b' his peers,
And not by pedants and philosophers,
Incompetent to judge poetic fury,
As butchers are forbid to b' of a jury;
Besides the most intolerable wrong
To try their matters in a foreign tongue,
By foreign jurymen, like Sophocles,
Or Tales falser than Euripides;
When not an English native dares appear
To be a witness for the prisoner;
When all the laws they use to' arraign and try
The innocent and wrong'd delinquent by,
Were made b' a foreign lawyer, and his pupils,
To put an end to all poetic scruples;
And by th' advice of vertuosi-Tuscans,
Determin'd all the doubts of socks and buskins;
Gave judgment on all past and future plays,
As is apparent by Speroni's case,
Which Lope Vega first began to steal,
And after him the French filou Corneille;
And since our English plagiaries nim,
And steal their far-fet criticisms from him,
And by an action falsely laid of Trover,
The lumber for their proper goods recover;
Enough to furnish all the lewd impeachers
Of witty Beaumont's poetry, and Fletcher's,
Who for a few misprisions of wit,
Are charg'd by those who ten times worse commit;
And for misjudging some unhappy scenes,
Are censur'd for't with more unlucky sense;
When all their worst miscarriages delight,
And please more, than the best that pedants write.