To Mr Southerne, On His Comedy Called "the Wives' Excuse." Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDEFGHHBBBIIIIJ JKLMNOOPQIISure there's a fate in plays and 'tis in vain | A |
To write while these malignant planets reign | A |
Some very foolish influence rules the pit | B |
Not always kind to sense or just to wit | B |
And whilst it lasts let buffoonry succeed | C |
To make us laugh for never was more need | C |
Farce in itself is of a nasty scent | D |
But the gain smells not of the excrement | E |
The Spanish nymph a wit and beauty too | F |
With all her charms bore but a single show | G |
But let a monster Muscovite appear | H |
He draws a crowded audience round the year | H |
May be thou hast not pleased the box and pit | B |
Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit | B |
So Terence plotted but so Terence writ | B |
Like his thy thoughts are true thy language clean | I |
Even lewdness is made moral in thy scene | I |
The hearers may for want of Nokes repine | I |
But rest secure the readers will be thine | I |
Nor was thy labour'd drama damn'd or hiss'd | J |
But with a kind civility dismiss'd | J |
With such good manners as the Wife did use | K |
Who not accepting did but just refuse | L |
There was a glance at parting such a look | M |
As bids thee not give o'er for one rebuke | N |
But if thou wouldst be seen as well as read | O |
Copy one living author and one dead | O |
The standard of thy style let Etherege be | P |
For wit the immortal spring of Wycherly | Q |
Learn after both to draw some just design | I |
And the next age will learn to copy thine | I |
John Dryden
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