 | Pleasant dialogues and dramma's
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A speech spoken to their two excellent Majesties, at the first Play play'd by the Queenes Servants, in the new Theater at White Hall.
When Greece, the chiefe priority might claime
For Arts, and Armes, and held the eminent name
Of Monarchie; They erected divers places,
Some to the Muses, others to the Graces:
Where Actors strove, and Poets did devise
With tongue and pen, to please the eares and eyes
Of Princely Auditors; The time was, when
To heare, the rapture of one Poets pen,
A Theater hath beene built, By the fates doome,
When th' Empire was removed from thence to Rome.
The potent Cæsars had their Circi, and
Large Amphitheaters: in which might stand
And sit, full fourescore thousand, all in view,
And touch of voice: This great Augustus knew.
Nay Rome, it's wealth, and potency injoyd,
Till by the barbarous Gothes these were destroy'd.
But may this structure last, and you be seene
Here a spectator, with your Princely Queene,
In your old age, as in your flourishing prime,
To out-strip Augustus both in fame and time.
| Pleasant dialogues and dramma's
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