The ARGUMENT.

To give some Light into the following Tragedy, it will not be amiss to give a short Account of the Persons concerned in it, that by knowing their Characters beforehand, the Reader may better judge of the Author’s Performance. The first who appears upon the Stage is Ulysses, of whom I shall give the following short History.

Ulysses was King of Ithaca, Cephalenia, and Dulichium, (Islands in the Ionian Sea). Homer makes him remarkable for his great Experience, Eloquence, Counsel, and Skill in Military Affairs. And likewise very famous for his Stratagems. It was he who detected Achilles, disguised among the Daughters of Lycomedes; It was he who contriv’d the bringing of Philoctetes and his Arrows against Troy; who stole off the Ashes of Laomedon; the Palladium, or Image of Minerva; who killed Rhesus King of Thrace, and brought away his Horses, before they drank of the River Xanthus. For all these Conditions were necessary to be fullfilled; or Troy could never be taken.

Neoptolemus in the Original signifies a young Warriour; his true Name was Pyrrhus. He was the Son of Achilles. A young Man of strict Virtue and Honour, and one of great Tenderness and Humanity; but at the same Time he was ambitious. This was the only weak Part where Ulysses could attack him, which we find he took Advantage of, with great Art and Subtlety. Yet, what gives us great Pleasure in the Catastrophe of this Tragedy, we find, upon the moving Exclamations and Complaints of Philoctetes, that his good Nature, and the great Sense he had of Justice, prevails over all other Considerations.

As for the CHORUS it is the only thing unaccountable in the antient Tragedians. To examine nicely into the whole Conduct of it would require a particular Treatise, and therefore I pass it by for many Reasons, which would rather be impertinent to the Reader, than any way agreeable, or improving; However it will not be amiss to set down here what Horace says of the Chorus, in his Art of Poetry.

A Chorus shou’d supply what Action wants,

And hath a gen’rous and a manly Part;

Bridles wild Rage, loves rigid Honesty,

And strict Observance of impartial Laws,

Sobriety, Security, and Peace,

And begs the Gods to turn blind Fortune’s Wheel,

To raise the Wretched, and pull down the Proud.

But nothing must be sung between the Acts

But what some way conduces to the Plot.

Roscommon.

Philoctetes, Son of Pæan, went with seven Ships of his own a Voluntier to Troy; and, as Sophocles relates it, he was stung by a Viper in one of his Feet, which occasioned such an offensive Smell, and so great a Pain, that the Disturbance which he gave the Greeks with his Exclamations oblig’d the Grecian Generals to expose him in the Wilds of Lemnos. For which monstrous and ungrateful Treatment nothing less than the Ghost of Hercules appearing to him could make him join a second time against the Trojans.

The Merchant is a Person unknown, introduced by the Poet to make out the Stratagem of Ulysses.

Hercules, the Son of Jupiter and Alcumena; much persecuted by Juno because he was the Off-spring of a stoln Amour. Hence arise the great Number of Fables of his prodigious Exploits all over the World.