Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EPILOGUE TO 'LOVE IN THE DARK' AS IT WAS SPOKE BY MR. HAINES, by JOHN WILMOT


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EPILOGUE TO 'LOVE IN THE DARK' AS IT WAS SPOKE BY MR. HAINES, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: As charms are nonsense, nonsense seems a charm
Last Line: While men of wit find one another here.
Alternate Author Name(s): Rochester, 2d Earl Of
Subject(s): Theater & Theaters


As charms are nonsense, nonsense seems a charm
Which hearers of all judgment does disarm,
For songs and scenes a double audience bring,
And doggerel takes which smiths in satin sing.
Now to machines and a dull masque you run,
We find that wit's the monster you would shun,
And by my troth, 'tis most discreetly done:
For since with vice and folly wit is fed,
Through mercy 'tis most of you are not dead.
Players turn puppets now at your desire:
In their mouths nonsense, in their tails a wire,
They fly through clouds of clouts and showers of fire.
A kind of losing loadum is their game,
Where the worst writer has the greatest fame.
To get vile plays like theirs shall be our care,
But of such awkward actors we despair.
False taught at first,
Like bowls ill-biased, still the more they run,
They're further off than when they first begun.
In comedy their unweighed action mark:
There's one is such a dear familiar spark
He yawns as if he were but half awake,
And fribbling for free speaking does mistake.
False accent and neglectful action too
They have both so nigh good, yet neither true,
That both together, like an ape's mock face,
By near resembling man do man disgrace.
Through-paced ill actors may perhaps be cured;
Half-players, like half-wits, can't be endured.
Yet these are they who durst expose the age
Of the great wonder of our English stage,
Whom nature seemed to form for your delight,
And bid him speak as she bid Shakespeare write.
Those blades indeed are cripples in their art --
Mimic his foot, but not his speaking part.
Let them the Traitor or Volpone try;
Could they
Rage like Cethegus, or like Cassius die,
They ne'er had sent to Paris for such fancies
As monsters' heads and merry-andrews' dances.
Withered perhaps, not perished we appear,
But they were blighted, and ne'er came to bear.
Th' old poets dressed your mistress wit before;
These draw you on with an old painted whore,
And sell, like bawds, patched plays for maids twice o'er.
Yet they may scorn our House and actors too,
Since they have swelled so high to hector you.
They cry, "Pox o' these Covent Garden men!
Damn 'em, not one of them but keeps out ten.
Were they once gone, we for those thundering blades
Should have an audience of substantial trades,
Who love our muzzled boys and tearing fellows,
My lord, great Neptune, and Great nephew, Aeolus.
Oh, how the merry citizen's in love
With
Psyche, the goddess of each field and grove!
He cries, 'I' faith, methinks 'tis well enough,'
But you roar out and cry, ''Tis all damned stuff!'"
So to their House the graver fops repair,
While men of wit find one another here.





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