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.]
next scene.
index.