Spoken by Mrs. Currer.
The Devil take this cursed plotting Age,
‘T has ruin’d all our Plots upon the Stage;
Suspicions, New Elections, Jealousies,
Fresh Informations, New Discoveries,
Do so employ the busy fearful Town,
Our honest Calling here is useless grown:
Each Fool turns Politician now, and wears
A formal Face, and talks of State-affairs;
Makes Acts, Decrees, and a new Model draws
For Regulation both of Church and Laws;
Tires out his empty Noddle to invent
What Rule and Method’s best in Government:
But Wit, as if ‘twere Jesuitical,
Is an Abomination to ye all.
To what a wretched pass will poor Plays come?
This must be damn’d, the Plot is laid in Rome;
’Tis hard — yet —
Not one amongst ye all I’ll undertake,
E’er thought that we should suffer for Religion’s sake:
Who wou’d have thought that wou’d have been th’ occasion
Of any contest in our hopeful Nation?
For my own Principles, faith let me tell ye,
I’m still of the Religion of my Cully;
And till these dangerous times they’d none to fix on,
But now are something in mere Contradiction,
And piously pretend these are not days,
For keeping Mistresses, and seeing Plays:
Who says this Age a Reformation wants,
When Betty Currer’s Lovers all turns Saints?
In vain, alas, I flatter, swear, and vow,
You’ll scarce do any thing for Charity now:
Yet I am handsom still, still young and mad,
Can wheedle, lye, dissemble, jilt — egad,
As well and artfully as e’er I did;
Yet not one Conquest can I gain or hope,
No Prentice, not a Foreman of a Shop,
So that I want extremely new Supplies;
Of my last Coxcomb, faith, these were the Prize;
And by the tatter’d Ensigns you may know,
These Spoils were of a Victory long ago:
Who wou’d have thought such hellish Times to have seen,
When I shou’d be neglected at Eighteen?
That Youth and Beauty shou’d be quite undone,
A Pox upon the Whore of Babylon.