PREFACE

The death of Antony and Cleopatra is a subject which has been
treated by the greatest wits of our nation after Shakespeare,
and by all so variously that their example has given me the confidence
to try myself in this bow of Ulysses amongst the crowd of suitors;
and, withal, to take my own measures in aiming at the mark.	5
I doubt not but the same motive has prevailed with all of us
in this attempt: I mean the excellency of the moral, for the
chief persons represented were famous patterns of unlawful
love, and their end accordingly was unfortunate. All reasonable
men have long since concluded that the hero of the poem ought	10
not to be a character of perfect virtue, for then he could not,
without injustice, be made unhappy; nor yet altogether wicked,
because he could not then be pitied: I have therefore steered
the middle course, and have drawn the character of Antony as
favourably as Plutarch, Appian, and Dion Cassius would give	15
me leave; the like I have observed in Cleopatra. That which is
wanting to work up the pity to a greater height was not afforded
me by the story: for the crimes of love which they both committed
were not occasioned by any necessity or fatal ignorance,
but were wholly voluntary, since our passions are, or ought to	20
be, within our power. The fabric of the play is regular enough,
as to the inferior parts of it, and the unities of time, place, and
action more exactly observed than, perhaps, the English theatre
requires. Particularly, the action is so much one that it is the only of
the kind without episode or underplot, every scene in the	25
tragedy conducing to the main design, and every act concluding
with a turn of it. The greatest error in the contrivance seems
to be in the person of Octavia; for, though I might use the
privilege of a poet to introduce her into Alexandria, yet I
had not enough considered that the compassion she moved to	30
herself and children was destructive to that which I reserved
for Antony and Cleopatra, whose mutual love, being founded
upon vice, must lessen the favour of the audience to them,
when virtue and innocence were oppressed by it. And, though
I justified Antony in some measure by making Octavia’s departure	35
to proceed wholly from herself, yet the force of the first machine
still remained; and the dividing of pity, like the cutting of a river
into many channels, abated the strength of the natural stream.
But this is an objection which none of my critics have urged
against me, and therefore I might have let it pass, if I could	40
have resolved to have been partial to myself. The faults my enemies
have found are rather cavils concerning little, and not essential,
decencies, which a master of the ceremonies may decide betwixt us.
The French poets, I confess, are strict observers of these punctilios.
They would not, for example, have suffered Cleopatra and Octavia	45
to have met; or, if they had met, there must only have passed betwixt
them some cold civilities, but no eagerness of repartee, for fear of
offending against the greatness of their characters, and the
modesty of their sex. This objection I foresaw, and at the same
time contemned; for I judged it both natural and probable that	50
Octavia, proud of her new-gained conquest, would search out
Cleopatra to triumph over her, and that Cleopatra, thus
attacked, was not of a spirit to shun the encounter; and ’tis
not unlikely that two exasperated rivals should use such satire
as I have put into their mouths, for, after all, though the one	55
were a Roman and the other a queen, they were both women.
’Tis true, some actions, though natural, are not fit to be represented,
and broad obscenities in words ought in good manners to
be avoided: expressions therefore are a modest clothing of
our thoughts, as breeches and petticoats are of our bodies. If	60
I have kept myself within the bounds of modesty, all beyond
it is but nicety and affectation, which is no more but modesty
depraved into a vice. They betray themselves who are too quick
of apprehension in such cases, and leave all reasonable men to
imagine worse of them than of the poet.	65
Honest Montaigne goes yet farther: Nous ne sommes que
cérémonie; la cérémonie nous emporte, et laissons la substance des choses.
Nous nous tenons aux branches, et abandonnons le tronc et le corps.
Nous avons appris aux dames de rougir, oyans seulement nommer
ce qu’elles ne craignent aucunement à faire: nous n’osons appeller	70
à droit nos membres, et ne craignons pas de les employer à
toute sorte de débauche. La cérémonie nous défend d’exprimer
par paroles les choses licites et naturelles, et nous l’en croyons; la
raison nous défend de n’en faire point d’illicites et mauvaises, et
personne ne l’en croît. My comfort is that by this opinion, my	75
enemies are but sucking critics, who would fain be nibbling
ere their teeth are come.
Yet in this nicety of manners does the excellency of French
poetry consist: their heroes are the most civil people breathing,
but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense;	80
all their wit is in their ceremony; they want the genius which
animates our stage; and therefore ’tis but necessary, when they
cannot please, that they should take care not to offend. But as
the civilest man in the company is commonly the dullest, so these
authors, while they are afraid to make you laugh or cry, out of	85
pure good manners make you sleep. They are so careful not to
exasperate a critic that they never leave him any work; so busy
with the broom, and make so clean a riddance, that there
is little left either for censure or for praise: for no part of a
poem is worth our discommending where the whole is insipid;	90
as when we have once tasted of palled wine, we stay not
to examine it glass by glass. But while they affect to shine
in trifles, they are often careless in essentials. Thus their Hippolytus
is so scrupulous in point of decency that he will rather
expose himself to death than accuse his stepmother to his	95
father, and my critics, I am sure, will commend him for it; but
we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of
generosity is not practicable but with fools and madmen. This
was good manners with a vengeance, and the audience is like to
be much concerned at the misfortunes of this admirable hero:	100
but take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he
would think it a wiser part to set the saddle on the right horse,
and choose rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken,
honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain.
In the meantime we may take notice that where the poet ought	105
to have preserved the character as it was delivered to us by
antiquity, when he should have given us the picture of a rough
young man of the Amazonian strain, a jolly huntsman, and
both by his profession and his early rising a mortal enemy to
love, he has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him	110
to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and
transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur
Hippolyte. I should not have troubled myself thus far with
French poets, but that I find our Chedreux critics wholly form
their judgements by them. But for my part, I desire to be tried	115
by the laws of my own country; for it seems unjust to me that
the French should prescribe here till they have conquered.
Our little sonneteers who follow them have too narrow souls
to judge of poetry. Poets themselves are the most proper,
though I conclude not the only, critics. But till some genius as	120
universal as Aristotle shall arise, one who can penetrate into all
arts and sciences without the practice of them, I shall think
it reasonable that the judgement of an artificer in his own art
should be preferable to the opinion of another man, at least
where he is not bribed by interest or prejudiced by malice.	125
And this, I suppose, is manifest by plain induction. For, first,
the crowd cannot be presumed to have more than a gross
instinct of what pleases or displeases them: every man will
grant me this; but then, by a particular kindness to himself, he
draws his own stake first, and will be distinguished from the	130
multitude, of which other men may think him one. But if I
come closer to those who are allowed for witty men, either by
the advantage of their quality or by common fame, and affirm
that neither are they qualified to decide sovereignly concerning
poetry, I shall yet have a strong party of my opinion; for most	135
of them severally will exclude the rest, either from the number
of witty men, or at least of able judges; but here again they are
all indulgent to themselves, and everyone who believes himself
a wit, that is, every man, will pretend at the same time to a right
of judging. But to press it yet farther, there are many witty men,	140
but few poets; neither have all poets a taste of tragedy. And this
is the rock on which they are daily splitting. Poetry, which is a
picture of nature, must generally please; but ’tis not to be understood
that all parts of it must please every man; therefore is not tragedy to
be judged by a witty man whose taste is only confined to comedy. Nor	145
is every man who loves tragedy a sufficient judge of it; he must under-
stand the excellencies of it too, or he will only prove a blind admirer,
not a critic. From hence it comes that so many satires on poets, and
censures of their writings, fly abroad. Men of pleasant conversation
(at least esteemed so), and indued with a trifling kind of fancy,	150
perhaps helped out with some smattering of Latin, are ambitious
to distinguish themselves from the herd of gentlemen by their
poetry:
Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in ilia Fortuna.	155
And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with
what Fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with
their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and
needlessly expose their nakedness to public view, not considering
that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober	160
men which they have found from their flatterers after the third
bottle? If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on
us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the
world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet
is in possession of it, would he bring it of his own accord to	165
be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talent,
yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but
what can be urged in their defence who, not having the
vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take
pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in	170
the right where he said that ‘no man is satisfied with his own
condition’. A poet is not pleased because he is not rich; and the
rich are discontented because the poets will not admit them of
their number. Thus the case is hard with writers: if they succeed
not, they must starve; and if they do, some malicious satire	175
is prepared to level them for daring to please without their
leave. But while they are so eager to destroy the fame of others,
their ambition is manifest in their concernment: some poem
of their own is to be produced, and the slaves are to be laid
flat with their faces on the ground, that the monarch may	180
appear in the greater majesty.
Dionysius and Nero had the same longings, but with all their
power they could never bring their business well about. ’Tis
true, they proclaimed themselves poets by sound of trumpet;
and poets they were, upon pain of death to any man who durst	185
call them otherwise. The audience had a fine time on’t, you may
imagine: they sat in a bodily fear, and looked as demurely as
they could, for ’twas a hanging matter to laugh unseasonably,
and the tyrants were suspicious, as they had reason, that their
subjects had ‘em in the wind: so every man, in his own defence,	190
set as good a face upon the business as he could: ’twas known
beforehand that the monarchs were to be crowned laureates; but
when the show was over, and an honest man was suffered to
depart quietly, he took out his laughter which he had stifled,
with a firm resolution never more to see an emperor’s play,	195
though he had been ten years a-making it. In the meantime,
the true poets were they who made the best markets, for they
had wit enough to yield the prize with a good grace, and not
contend with him who had thirty legions: they were sure to
be rewarded if they confessed themselves bad writers, and that	200
was somewhat better than to be martyrs for their reputation.
Lucan’s example was enough to teach them manners; and
after he was put to death for overcoming Nero, the emperor
carried it without dispute for the best poet in his dominions.
No man was ambitious of that grinning honour, for if he	205
heard the malicious trumpeter proclaiming his name before
his betters, he knew there was but one way with him.
Maecenas took another course, and we know he was more than
a great man, for he was witty too; but finding himself far gone
in poetry, which Seneca assures us was not his talent, he	210
thought it his best way to be well with Virgil and with Horace,
that at least he might be a poet at the second hand; and we see
how happily it has succeeded with him, for his own bad poetry
is forgotten, and their panegyrics of him still remain. But they
who should be our patrons are for no such expensive ways to	215
fame: they have much of the poetry of Maecenas, but little of
his liberality. They are for persecuting Horace and Virgil in
the persons of their successors (for such is every man who has
any part of their soul and fire, though in a less degree). Some
of their little zanies yet go farther, for they are persecutors	220
even of Horace himself, as far as they are able, by their ignorant
and vile imitations of him, by making an unjust use of his
authority, and turning his artillery against his friends. But how
would he disdain to be copied by such hands! I dare answer for
him, he would be more uneasy in their company than he was	225
with Crispinus, their forefather, in the Holy Way, and would
no more have allowed them a place amongst the critics than he
would Demetrius the mimic and Tigellius the buffoon:
Demetri, teque, Tigelli, Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.	230
With what scorn would he look down on such miserable translators,
who make doggerel of his Latin, mistake his meaning, misapply his
censures, and often contradict their own! He is fixed as a landmark
to set out the bounds of poetry,
Saxum antiquum ingens,… Limes agro positus, litem ut discemeret arvis.	235
But other arms than theirs, and other sinews, are required
to raise the weight of such an author; and when they would
toss him against their enemies,
Genua labant, gelidus concrevit frigore sanguis, Tum lapis ipse viri vacuum per inane volutus, Nec spatium evasit totum neque pertulit ictum.	240
For my part, I would wish no other revenge, either for myself
or the rest of the poets, from this rhyming judge of the
twelvepenny gallery, this legitimate son of Sternhold, than that	245
he would subscribe his name to his censure, or (not to tax him
beyond his learning) set his mark. For should he own himself
publicly, and come from behind the lion’s skin, they whom he
condemns would be thankful to him, they whom he praises
would choose to be condemned, and the magistrates whom he	250
has elected would modestly withdraw from their employment
to avoid the scandal of his nomination. The sharpness of his
satire, next to himself, falls most heavily on his friends, and they
ought never to forgive him for commending them perpetually
the wrong way, and sometimes by contraries. If he have a	255
friend whose hastiness in writing is his greatest fault, Horace
would have taught him to have minced the matter, and to have
called it readiness of thought and a flowing fancy; for friendship
will allow a man to christen an imperfection by the name
of some neighbour virtue:	260
Vellem in amicitia sic erraremus, et isti Errori nomen virtus posuisset honestum.
But he would never have allowed him to have called a slow man hasty, or a hasty writer a slow drudge, as Juvenal explains it:
Canibus pigris scabieque vetusta Levibus etsiccae lambentibus ora lucernae Nomen eritpardus, tigris, leo, si quid adhuc est Quodfremit in terris violentius.	265
Yet Lucretius laughs at a foolish lover even for excusing the imperfections of his mistress:	270
Nigra melichrus est, immunda etfoetida acosmos. Balba loqui non quit, traulizi; muta pudens est, etc.
But to drive it ad Aethiopem cygnum is not to be endured. I leave
him to interpret this by the benefit of his French version on
the other side, and without farther considering him than I have	275
the rest of my illiterate censors, whom I have disdained to answer
because they are not qualified for judges. It remains that I acquaint
the reader that I have endeavoured in this play to follow the
practice of the ancients, who, as Mr Rymer has judiciously observed,
are, and ought to be, our masters. Horace likewise gives it for a rule	280
in his art of poetry,
Vos exemplaria Graeca Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.
Yet, though their models are regular, they are too little for
English tragedy, which requires to be built in a larger compass.	285
I could give an instance in the Oedipus Tyrannus, which was
the masterpiece of Sophocles, but I reserve it for a more fit
occasion, which I hope to have hereafter. In my style I have
professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare, which that I might
perform more freely, I have disencumbered myself from rhyme.	290
Not that I condemn my former way, but that this is more
proper to my present purpose. I hope I need not to explain
myself, that I have not copied my author servilely: words and
phrases must of necessity receive a change in succeeding ages,
but ’tis almost a miracle that much of his language remains so	295
pure, and that he who began dramatic poetry amongst us, untaught
by any and, as Ben Jonson tells us, without learning, should
by the force of his own genius perform so much that in a
manner he has left no praise for any who come after him. The
occasion is fair, and the subject would be pleasant, to handle	300
the difference of styles betwixt him and Fletcher, and wherein
and how far they are both to be imitated. But since I must not
be over-confident of my own performance after him, it will be
prudence in me to be silent. Yet I hope I may affirm, and without
vanity, that by imitating him I have excelled myself throughout	305
the play; and particularly, that I prefer the scene betwixt Antony
and Ventidius in the first act to anything which I have written
in this kind.