the best,

Tragedy should blush as much to stoop
To the low mimic follies of a farce,
As a grave matron would to dance with girls.
WENTWORTH DILLON (Earl of Roscom-
mon)-Horace. Of the Art of Poetry.
Line 270.

n.

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks: Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks. The founder's you: the table is this place: The carvers we: the prologue is the grace. Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish Though we're in Lent, I doubt you're still for flesh.

Satire's the sauce, high-season'd, sharp, and rough. Kind masks and beaux, I hope you're pepper-proof?

Wit is the wine; but 'tis so scarce the true Poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew, Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed join,

Are butcher's meat, a battle's a sirloin: Your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste,

Are water-gruel without salt or taste.

0. GEORGE FARQUHAR-The Way to Win Him. Prologue.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, "Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.

p.

GOLDSMITH--Retaliation. Line 101.

I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion.

i. Richard III. Act III. Sc. 5.

If it be true, that "good wine needs no bush," 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.

j. As You Like It. Epilogue.

I have heard, that guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have porcelain'd their malefactions.
k. Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2.

In a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well grac'd actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

1. Richard II. Act V. Sc. 2. Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his whole conceit, That, from her working, all his visage wann'd. m. Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2.

Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?
n. Midsummer Night's Dream. Act V.
Like a dull actor now,

I have forgotten my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace.

0. Coriolanus. Act V. Sc. 3.

Sc. 1.

O, there be players that I have seen play,and heard others praise, and that highlynot to speak it profanely, that neither, having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

p. Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, (and as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness,

q.

Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2.

The play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. 7. Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he shall weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion, That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.

8. Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2.

The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slowly falling to the prompter's bell:
A moment yet the actor stops,

And looks around, to say farewell.
It is an irksome word and task;
And when he's laughed and said his say,
He shows as he removes the mask,
A face that's anything but gay.
t. THACKERAY-The End of the Play.
In other things the knowing artist may
Judge better than the people; but a play
(Made for delight, and for no other use)
If you approve it not, has no excuse.
WALLER-Prologue to the Maid's

น.

Tragedy.

Fruits that blossom first will first be ripe. n. Othello. Act II. Sc. 3.

Methinks, I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. 0. Midsummer Night's Dream. Act IV. Sc. 1.

Superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing bough may live. p. Richard II. Act III. Sc. 4. The ripest fruit first falls.

q. Richard II. Act II. Sc. 1.

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbor'd by fruit of baser quality.

Henry V. Act I. Sc. 1.

You sunburn'd sickle men, of August weary, Come hither from the furrow, and be merry. Tempest. Act IV. Sc. 1.

S.