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PROLOGUE, DESIGNED FOR MR. D’URFEY’S LAST PLAY - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Cambridge Edition, ed. Henry W. Boynton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903).

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PROLOGUE, DESIGNED FOR MR. D’URFEY’S LAST PLAY

‘Tom’ D’Urfey was a writer of popular farces under the Restoration. Through Addison’s influence his play The Plotting Sisters was revived for his benefit; and the present prologue was possibly written for that occasion. It was first published in 1727.

    • Grown old in rhyme, ’t were barb’rous to discard
    • Your persevering, unexhausted Bard:
    • Damnation follows death in other men,
    • But your damn’d poet lives and writes again.
    • The adventurous lover is successful still,
    • Who strives to please the Fair against her will.
    • Be kind, and make him in his wishes easy,
    • Who in your own despite has strove to please ye.
    • He scorn’d to borrow from the Wits of yore,
    • But ever writ, as none e’er writ before.10
    • You modern Wits, should each man bring his claim,
    • Have desperate debentures on your fame;
    • And little would be left you, I’m afraid,
    • If all your debts to Greece and Rome were paid.
    • From this deep fund our author largely draws,
    • Nor sinks his credit lower than it was.
    • Tho’ plays for honour in old time he made,
    • ’T is now for better reasons—to be paid.
    • Believe him, he has known the world too long,
    • And seen the death of much immortal song.20
    • He says, poor poets lost, while players won,
    • As pimps grow rich while gallants are undone.
    • Though Tom the poet writ with ease and pleasure,
    • The comic Tom abounds in other treasure.
    • Fame is at best an unperforming cheat;
    • But ’t is substantial happiness to eat.
    • Let ease, his last request, be of your giving,
    • Nor force him to be damn’d to get his living.