Volume 10 / Part 3 — PROLOGUE TO THE KING AND QUEEN, UPON THE UNION OF THE TWO COMPANIES, IN 1686.
Reading edition
The two rival Companies, so long known by the names of the King's and the Duke's players, after exhausting every effort, both of poetry and machinery, to obtain a superiority over each other, were, at length, by the expence of these exertions, and the inconstancy of the public, reduced to the necessity of uniting their forces, in order to maintain their ground. "Taste and fashion," says Colley Cibber, "with us, have always had wings, and fly from one public spectacle to another so wantonly, that I have been informed, by those who remember it, that a famous puppet-show, in Salisbury-change, then standing where Cecil-street now is, so far distressed these two celebrated companies, that they were reduced to petition the king for relief against it. Nor ought we, perhaps, to think this strange, when, if I mistake not, Terence himself reproaches the Roman auditors of his time with the like fondness for the funambuli, the rope-dancers. Not to dwell too long, therefore, upon that part of my history, which I have only collected from oral tradition, I shall content myself with telling you, that Mohun and Hart now growing old, (for above thirty years before this time, they had severally borne the king's commission of major and captain in the civil wars,) and the younger actors, as Goodman, Clark, and others, being impatient to get into their parts, and growing intractable, the audiences too of both houses then falling off, the patentees of each, by the king's advice, (which, perhaps, amounted to a command,) united their interests, and both companies into one, exclusive of all others, in the year 1684. This union was, however, so much in favour of the Duke's company, that Hart left the stage upon it, and Mohun survived not long after."[388] Apology, p. 58.
It appears, that the king and queen honoured with their presence the first performance under the union they had recommended. Dryden's prologue abounds with those violent expressions of loyalty with which James loved to be greeted.
Since faction ebbs, and rogues grow out of fashion, Their penny scribes take care t' inform the nation, How well men thrive in this or that plantation:[389] How Pennsylvania's air agrees with Quakers, And Carolina's with Associators; Both e'en too good for madmen and for traitors.[390] Truth is, our land with saints is so run o'er, And every age produces such a store, That now there's need of two New Englands more. What's this, you'll say, to us, and our vocation? Only thus much, that we have left our station, And made this theatre our new plantation. The factious natives never could agree; But aiming, as they called it, to be free, Those play-house Whigs set up for property.[391] Some say, they no obedience paid of late; But would new tears and jealousies create, Till topsy-turvy they had turned the state. Plain sense, without the talent of foretelling, Might guess 'twould end in downright knocks and quelling; For seldom comes there better of rebelling. When men will, needlessly, their freedom barter For lawless power, sometimes they catch a Tartar;— There's a damned word that rhimes to this, called Charter.[392] But, since the victory with us remains, You shall be called to twelve in all our gains, If you'll not think us saucy for our pains. Old men shall have good old plays to delight them; And you, fair ladies and gallants, that slight them, We'll treat with good new plays, if our new wits can write them. We'll take no blundering verse, no fustain tumor, No dribbling love, from this or that presumer; No dull fat fool shammed on the stage for humour:[393] For, faith, some of them such vile stuff have made, As none but fools or fairies ever played; But 'twas, as shopmen say, to force a trade. We've given you tragedies, all sense defying, And singing men, in woful metre dying; This 'tis when heavy lubbers will be flying. All these disasters we will hope to weather; We bring you none of our old lumber hither; Whig poets and Whig sheriffs[394] may hang together.