Satire's View of Sentimentalism 181 it here. The Prologue is not so well known, however, and it is especially suitable for quotation because it shows its makers' classical point of view in criticism as well as their powers of spirited derision: PROLOGUE In Character. Too long the triumphs of our early times, With civil discord and with regal crimes, Have stain'd these boards; while Shakespeare's pen has shown Thoughts, manners, men, to modern days unknown. Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage; [Applause.] And classic Buskins soil'd a British stage. To-night our bard, who scorns pedantic rules, His plot has borrow'd from the German schools; The German schools where no dull maxims bind The bold expansion of the electric mind. Fix'd to no period, circled by no space, He leaps the flaming bounds of time and place. Round the dark confines of the forest raves, With gentle Robbers stocks his gloomy caves; Tells how Prime Ministers are shocking things, And reigning Dukes as bad as tyrant Kings; How to two swains one nymph her vows may give And how two damsels with one lover live! Delicious scenes! such scenes our bard displays, Which, crown'd with German, sue for British, praise. . . . Nor let succeeding generations say A British audience damn'd a German play!" In spite of such vigorous attacks as those of the Anti- Jacobin poets, German drama was very successful in England at the turn of the century. Probably the opinion of the con- servative minority concerning the popularity of the German plays is represented in a rare Satirical Epistle to, the Poet Laureate (1801). Its author, lacking the cleverness of the parodists, give!s direct expression to his views. After some lines of praise for Speed the Plow and other moral pieces, he proceeds: In vain do these reflect the giddy age, If German phrensy still usurp the stage. While British gold Germania's legions pays, She barters jargon, sentiment, and plays: Not as, when vanquish'd, yet of arts the seat,
68 Edmonds, Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin, 206-208.
