Prologue To "the Pilgrim." By Beaumont And Fletcher. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBAACCDDEEFGHII JJKKLLMNOPQQBBRRSATU VVWWLXXRR CCYYZZBBB| REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT ANNO | A |
| - | |
| - | |
| How wretched is the fate of those who write | B |
| Brought muzzled to the stage for fear they bite | B |
| Where like Tom Dove they stand the common foe | A |
| Lugg'd by the critic baited by the beau | A |
| Yet worse their brother poets damn the play | C |
| And roar the loudest though they never pay | C |
| The fops are proud of scandal for they cry | D |
| At every lewd low character That's I | D |
| He who writes letters to himself would swear | E |
| The world forgot him if he was not there | E |
| What should a poet do 'Tis hard for one | F |
| To pleasure all the fools that would be shown | G |
| And yet not two in ten will pass the town | H |
| Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind | I |
| More goes to make a fop than fops can find | I |
| - | |
| Quack Maurus though he never took degrees | J |
| In either of our universities | J |
| Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks | K |
| Because he play'd the fool and writ three books | K |
| But if he would be worth a Poet's pen | L |
| He must be more a fool and write again | L |
| For all the former fustian stuff he wrote | M |
| Was dead born doggerel or is quite forgot | N |
| His man of Uz stript of his Hebrew robe | O |
| Is just the proverb and as poor as Job | P |
| One would have thought he could no longer jog | Q |
| But Arthur was a level Job's a bog | Q |
| There though he crept yet still he kept in sight | B |
| But here he founders in and sinks down right | B |
| Had he prepared us and been dull by rule | R |
| Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule | R |
| But our bold Briton without fear or awe | S |
| O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha | A |
| Invades the Psalms with rhymes and leaves no room | T |
| For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come | U |
| - | |
| But when if after all this godly gear | V |
| Is not so senseless as it would appear | V |
| Our mountebank has laid a deeper train | W |
| His cant like Merry Andrew's noble vein | W |
| Cat calls the sects to draw them in again | L |
| At leisure hours in epic song he deals | X |
| Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels | X |
| Prescribes in haste and seldom kills by rule | R |
| But rides triumphant between stool and stool | R |
| - | |
| Well let him go 'tis yet too early day | C |
| To get himself a place in farce or play | C |
| We know not by what name we should arraign him | Y |
| For no one category can contain him | Y |
| A pedant canting preacher and a quack | Z |
| Are load enough to break one ass's back | Z |
| At last grown wanton he presumed to write | B |
| Traduced two kings their kindness to requite | B |
| One made the doctor and one dubb'd the knight | B |
John Dryden
(1)
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