Читать книгу The Two Noble Kinsmen - John Fletcher - Страница 4

Table of Contents

[Florish.]

New Playes, and Maydenheads, are neare akin,Much follow’d both, for both much mony gi'yn,If they stand sound, and well: And a good Play(Whose modest Sceanes blush on his marriage day,And shake to loose his honour) is like hirThat after holy Tye and first nights stirYet still is modestie, and still retainesMore of the maid to sight, than Husband’s paines.We pray our Play may be so; For I am sureIt has a noble Breeder, and a pure,A learned, and a Poet never wentMore famous yet twixt Po and silver Trent.Chaucer (of all admir’d) the Story gives,There constant to eternity it lives.If we let fall the Noblenesse of this,And the first sound this child heare, be a hisse,How will it shake the bones of that good manAnd make him cry from under ground, “O fanFrom me the witles chaffe of such a wrighterThat blastes my Bayes, and my fam'd workes makes lighterThen Robin Hood!” This is the feare we bring;For to say Truth, it were an endlesse thing,And too ambitious, to aspire to him,Weake as we are, and almost breathlesse swimIn this deepe water. Do but you hold outYour helping hands, and we shall take about,And something doe to save us: You shall heareSceanes, though below his Art, may yet appeareWorth two houres travell. To his bones sweet sleepe:Content to you. If this play doe not keepeA little dull time from us, we perceaveOur losses fall so thicke, we must needs leave.