2 That our sunk eyes have waked for all this while: 1 What's here? THE ARRAIGNMENT!] Envy says this upon discovering, as Whalley observes, the title of the play, which, as is already mentioned, was always written or painted in large letters, and fixed in some conspicuous part of the stage. To this practice there are innumerable allusions in our old dramatists. 2 Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms.] Worms, the generic English word for snake, is very common in our ancient writers, though now confined to one or two of the species. Cowley seems to have had this description in view, in the first book of Shoot out yourselves at length, as your forced stings To which at last I am arrived as Prologue. Rome? Rome? and Rome? Crack, eye-strings, and your balls the Davideis. Envy rises from the infernal regions, attired as she is here, and thus addresses her ministers: "With that she takes One of her worst, her best beloved snakes, Softly, dear worm, soft and unseen, she said, Into his bosom steal," &c. Cowley is so pleased with the management and address of Envy, that he very characteristically makes her "envy herself!" "What, So long as since the plot was but an embrion.] There is no pleasing Decker; for he twits Jonson with this confession. will he be fifteen weeks about this cockatrice's egg too? has he not cackled yet? has he not lay'd yet?" Surely our Untrusser must have possessed a very extraordinary facility in writing, if such a period as this appeared too long for the production of the Poetaster. the scene is, ha! 4 Rome? Rome? &c.] We have here a curious proof of the absolute poverty of the stage. As far as we have hitherto gone in Jon Drop into earth; let me be ever blind. Flows forth at all my pores, my entrails burn : That come with basilisk's eyes, whose forked tongues I have endow'd you with: I'll lend you more. Upon his lines, and shew your rusty teeth In your deep throats; and let the heads come forth At your rank mouths; that he may see you arm'd With triple malice, to hiss, sting, and tear His work and him; to forge, and then declaim, Traduce, corrupt, apply, inform, suggest; O, these are gifts wherein your souls are blest. What! do you hide yourselves? will none appear? None answer? what, doth this calm troop affright you? Nay, then I do despair; down, sink again : son, not the slightest notice has occurred of a moveable scene: a board, or a slip of paper, tells the audience that Rome is before them; and if there is any necessity for changing the place of action, as in Catiline, another bit of deal is thrust in, to inform them that they now see Fesulæ. The rage of Envy is excited because the scene is not laid in London, and among the poet's contemporaries; a little patience, however, would have rendered her fury unnecessary. This travail is all lost with my dead hopes. [Descends slowly. The third sounding. As she disappears, enter PROLOGUE hastily, Stay, monster, ere thou sink-thus on thy head An armed Prologue; know, 'tis a dangerous age: 5 An armed Prologue.] The prologue is spoken by a person in armour, to defend the author against the attacks of his adversaries and detractors. This whimsical circumstance has been imitated in the prologue to Langartha, a tragi-comedy by Henry Burnell, which an Amazon delivers with a battle-axe in her hand. And the prologue to Troilus and Cressida was so spoken: "And hither am I come, A prologue arm'd—but not in confidence Not, as the commentators observe, in confidence of the author's abilities, but in a character suited to the subject. Troilus and Cressida is supposed to have been written in 1602. WHAL. O bone, Totov σε εжоc Quyeν! But for this inadvertent introduction of the date of Troilus and Cressida, the passage in the text might have passed for a "wanton sneer" at Shakspeare; now, alas ! the quotation can only be considered as a "just reflection" upon Jonson; which, as the commentators well know, is a very different |