The Two Noble Kinsmen
Prologue

          Flourish. [Enter Prologue]

PROLOGUE  New plays and maidenheads are near akin:
          Much followed both, for both much money gi`en,
          If they stand sound and well. And a good play,
          Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day
          And shake to lose his honor, is like her
          That after holy tie and first night's stir
          Yet still is modesty, and still retains
          More of the maid to sight than husband's pains.
          We pray our play may be so, for I am sure
          It has a noble breeder and a pure,
          A learned, and a poet never went 
          More famous yet 'twixt Po and silver Trent.
          Chaucer, of all admired, our story gives;
          There, constant to eternity, it lives.
          If we let fall the nobleness of this
          And the first sound this child be be a hiss,
          How it will shake the bones of that good man
          And make him cry from underground, "Oh, fan
          From me the witless chaff of such a writer
          That blasts my bays and my famed works makes lighter
          Than Robin Hood!" This is the fear we bring;
          For, to say truth, it were an endless thing
          And too ambitious to aspire to him,
          Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim
          In this deep water. Do you but hold out
          Your helping hands and we shall tack about
          And something do to save us. You shall hear
          Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear
          Worth two hours travail. To his bones sweet sleep.
          Content to you. If this play do not keep
          A little dull time from us, we percieve
          Our losses fall so thick, we needs must leave.

                                                Flourish. [Exit.]
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