University of Virginia Library

The Fatall sisters sure are muses growne,
Else whence proceeds this Fatall Union?
Or Muses Fatall sisters wee discry
Those in thy Play, these in thy Tragedy:
I'th front o'th booke, a troope all prest to be
Guards to thy Naples, and faire Sicily,
So many lines, and thou their center; Quils
To impe thy winged Pegasus, and rills
Paid to thy Hippocrene, a tribute show,
Which we as subjects to thy crowne do owe,
Leaves to thy Laurell; not to decke thy head,
But strew the way, wherein thy buskins treade,
As at thy Muses marriage; whom till now
We thought confin'd by some o're-maiden vow
To live encloystred; and for want of men
Wooe images, and pictures; but thy pen
Has made her now a Mother; see her laid
In Geniall sheetes, where she's no more a Maid,
But a chaste Prostitute; nay more I'le sweare
She is, O—a female ravisher:
For which, as a crackt Vestall, some did strive
With vaine attempts to bury her alive;
Things hid'in wide-sleeve gownes, all you can see
Of Artists in them is, they'r come t'A. B.
Men that thy play, as some new lesson con,
And hacke, and mangle thy blest Union;
Poore fooles! I pitty thē; how would they looke,
If at the barre Ben Johnson were their booke?
His fox would on these geese revenge thee so,
We should no hissing but i'th Common know;
Nor neede they other halter, Catiline
Affords them rope enough, in each strong line:
But thou may'st pardon them, whose spight has made
Thee famous, whilst, like the sad owle affraid
Of wrens, thou hast unto thy Ivy fled,
And where thou thought'st to hide, hast crown'd thy head:
They now must stand, and gaze with us, which bee
Alas too ignorant to censure thee.

We know not whether we should wring our hands,
Or clap them at thy poëm, which commands
As much our griefe as pleasure, not an eye
That reads, but acts in teares thy Tragedy:
Nay we are more then actours, thou may'st call
Us mourners, and thy play a funerall:
Champions all steele, (which ne're shed drop but those
Forc't from their veines, not by their friends, but foes,)
At each sad accent, sweare they'r stabb'd i'th eye,
Betray their babies there, and downe-right cry.

But when we turne our eyes, and marke thy veine,
Streight our too much of joy is all our paine,
We stand enchanted, every word appeares
A charme, lines circles, letters characters,
Which ravish us to phrensie: had wee seene
It acted, sure thy Tragedy t'had bin;
Our claps had thunderstrooke thee, thou would'st call
This hand a club, that Brontes iron maule,
T'other Pyrachmon's, the loud scene would be
Their forge, (the Ætna of thy Sicily,)
Thundering upwards: but thy Muse doth need
No claps, or loud applause, (like swans which breed
Onely in noyse) to give her issues birth,
No Hums, nor Dam-me-boyes to set her forth:
Scorning all glory that is not her owne,
Nor needing a Blacke-Fryers shaven crowne,
(As some,) to wispe her temples, though put forth
So poore, that six-pence charge buyes all she's worth;
She'le out-blaze bright Aglaura's shining robe:
Her scene shall never change, the world's her Globe.