At first the music of our stage was rude,
Whilst in the cockpit and Blackfriars it stood;
And this might please enough in former reigns,
A thrifty, thin, and bashful audience,
When Bussy d’Ambois[1] and his fustian took,
And men were ravished with Queen Gordobuc.[2]
But since our monarch, by kind heaven sent,
Brought back the arts with him from banishment,
And by his gentle influence gave increase
To all the harmless luxuries of peace;
Favoured by him, our stage has flourished too,
And every day in outward splendour grew;
In music, song, and dance of every kind,
And all the grace of action 'tis refined;
And since that opera 's at length come in,
Our players have so well improved the scene
With gallantry of habit, and machine,
As makes our theatre in glory vie
With the best ages of antiquity;[3]
And mighty Roscius were he living now,
Would envy both our stage and acting too.[4]
Those who did first in tragedy essay,
(When the vile goat was all the poet's day)
- ↑ By Chapman.
- ↑ By Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. The same mistake was made in the sex of Gordubuc by Dryden, from whom it was copied, probably, by Oldham.
- ↑ The improvements in scenery and machinery (of which the first magnificent example was the Aglaura of Suckling), and the introduction of foreign operas, noticed with such applause by Oldham, were reprobated by Dryden as one of the causes of the degeneracy oi the drama.
- ↑ While Oldham was thus recording the prosperity of the stage, the dramatists were bitterly deploring its decline. At this very time the theatres were on the verge of bankruptcy in consequence of the political agitation, and the actors were migrating from the metropolis to the provinces in the hope of bettering their fortunes. Thus Dryden, in an epilogue spoken towards the close of 1681, describes the state of the players:
'We act by fits and starts, like drowning men,
But just peep up, and then pop down again.
Let those who call us wicked change their sense,
For never men lived more on Providence.
Not lottery cavaliers are half so poor,' &c.
Dryden, Ann. Ed. iii. p. 257.
