University of Virginia Library

EPILOGUE.

BY H. W. ESQ.
Spoken by Miss Walstein and Mr. Farren.
Miss W.
You can't be serious, Sir. What shall I do?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I appeal to you:
Will you permit me, if he persevere,
To ask this stranger, what's his business here?

Mr. F.
I'm in for it. There's no retreating now:
And first to make my very best stage bow;
Next, aid me, impudence! and let me dash on,
An enterprising amateur of fashion,
Sent by the London managers express,
Against this play to venture an address.

Miss W.
Well, Sir, when I have done, you may proceed.

Mr. F.
But, after you've prevailed, could I succeed?
How vain the effort! What a risk to run,
To win the ears Miss Walstein once had won!

Miss W.
So bold and so gallant, though just on shore!
You've been, I guess, on Irish ground before.

Mr. F.
Or, if you please, another plan we'll try:
I'll urge my strong objections, you'll reply.

Miss W.
Agreed: with this provision all the time,
That while we reason, we must try to rhyme.

Mr. F.
And first, as precedent the rule affords,
New plays should issue from the London boards.

Miss W.
By their decrees, forsooth, we must abide,
And their decisions teach us to decide.

Mr. F.
Besides, it violates the London ton:
No modern play can hope to have a run
Without some troops of cavalry.

Miss W.
To draw
O'er the fallen drama and the drama's law
An idol engine through the scenic plains,
And see it crush John Bull's devoted brains!

Mr. F.
But what's a modern play without a battle?
Drums, trumpets, cannonade, incessant rattle,
Horses and men together, dead and dying?

Miss W.
Children and pigs, and geese and colours flying!

Mr. F.
Spectacles all. Let those, who wish to rise
As authors, write to nothing but the eyes.

Miss W.
Is this your taste? this, Covent-Garden fare?
Sight, the sole faculty you worship there?
Though small our scene, though so confined our sphere,
'Tis not the only sense we practise here.

Mr. F.
Nay, but the tempting intellectual treat
Of witnessing a grand equestrian feat,
Where every rider's rooted to his seat!
Some damsel fighting on a snow-white steed!
At every lounge a dozen Tartars bleed.

Miss W.
How woefully must Dublin critics blink,
Till Astley's jockies teach them how to think!

Mr. F.
The play wants incident. Too cold to charm,
It has not heat enough to keep us warm:
No passage that inflames: no castle's blaze
Burns bright and brighter on the dazzled gaze!
Oh! give it, pray, a brilliant termination,
And end it in a general conflagration.

Miss W.
The piece wants fire, you think?

Mr. F.
No doubt about it:
No piece has ever yet gone off without it.
Nothing but men and women in this play!
Why men and women we see every day.
Heavens! with what civilised exalted rage,
Would England hoot it from a London stage!

Miss W.
A stage? A stable: a preposterous mew,
Where wild beasts are exposed to public view;
Where brutes, as human as their keepers, toil
All day, in rigorous study, to beguile
John Bull at night of his Athenian smile;
Where sabres clash, dogs howl, and horses neigh,
Young virgins shriek, men shout, and asses bray;
Where elephants, in more enlightened rage,
Shake their unwieldy fury o'er the stage.
Beasts of all kinds the beastly chaos throng,
And tortured puppies yelp the dismal song.
Oh! what an age! where brutes of every stature
Act plays ‘to hold the mirror up to nature;’
And what a theatre, where every ass
Delights to see himself in such a glass!

Mr. F.
Siddons and Kemble, who adorn our time—

Miss W.
Are less attractive than a pantomime.
She, of her art the first, has disappeared,
Her matchless powers and judgment unimpaired.
At distant intervals her brother seen,
‘Like angel visits, few, and far between.’
Now could I ask, and even to you refer,
Which of these exhibitions you prefer?
Whether the horses, elephants and bears,
Grimaldi, and the rest of Pidcock's players,
Hurry from side to side like frighted hares,
Or Kemble's chaste magnificence of mien
Touch with a living grace the polished scene,
Or, like a nobler god of war, appear,
And scare the Volscians with a Roman cheer,
Rejoicing in the noon of glory's fierce career?
Again I'd ask, again refer to you,
Which scenic splendour would you rather view?
Towers all on fire, and reeling ere thy fall,
Flames fiercely preying on a pasteboard wall;
The rosin-flash betray the dread design,
Our stage-artillery blowing up a mine,
While the vast building to its centre shook—
Or Siddons blasting Stukely with a look?
Oh; then the moral luxury to trace,
Virtue's pure anger mantling o'er her face,
Like eve's fine glow spread o'er a summer sky,
And all the lightnings of her glorious eye.

Mr. F.
There's no disputing on a point of taste.

Miss W.
Then we'll adhere to that we think the best.
Our bard too young, too timorous yet to rise,
With trembling pinion tempts his native skies:
Will you forgive, indulge the venial flame,
That burns so early for an Irish name?
Let this one truth be proved by this essay,
An Irish audience haile an Irish Play.