Joseph Addison

    PROLOGUE TO PHÆDRA AND HIPPOLYTUS.†

    SPOKEN BY MR. WILKES.

    Long has a race of heroes fill'd the stage,
    That rant by note, and through the gamut rage:
    In songs and airs express their martial fire,
    Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire;
    While lull'd by sound, and undisturb'd by wit,
    Calm and serene you indolently sit:
    And from the dull fatigue of thinking free,
    Hear the facetious fiddles' repartee:
    Our homespun authors must forsake the field,
    And Shakespeare to the soft Scarlatti yield.
        To your new taste the poet of this day,
    Was by a friend advis'd to form his play;
    Had Velentini, musically coy,
    Shun'd Phædra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd joy,
    It had not mov'd your wonder to have seen
    An eunuch fly from an enamour'd queen:
    How would it please, should she in English speak,
    And could Hippolytus reply in Greek?
    But he, a stranger to your modish way,
    By your old rules must stand or fall to-day.
    And hopes you will your foreign taste command,
    To bear, for once, with what you understand.



    † A tragedy written by Mr. Edmund Smith.


          Excerpted from:

          The Works of Joseph Addison. Vol III.
          New York: Harper Brothers, 1864. 433.



    Back to Works of Joseph Addison

    Site copyright ©1996-2006 Anniina Jokinen. All Rights Reserved.
    Created by Anniina Jokinen on November 11, 2006.






    Renaissance, English, poet, poetry, courtier, poems, literature, elizabethan, renaissance, tudor, Renaissance, Tudor, England, Britain, British, English, poetry, poet, poem, poems, sixteenth, century, Renaissance, English, Shakespeare, SCA, Costume, Corset, Bodice, Armor, England, art, painting, music, tapestry, illumination, costume, costuming, renaissance, Gloriana, gargoyles, tapestries, jewelry, jewellery, history, historical, medieval, festival, writing, women, knights, lord of the rings, harry potter, unicorn, queen, books, plays, masques, study, university, college, regal, royal, royalty, Renaissance, Renaissance, Renaissance, sonnet, sonnet